Private Bills [Lords] (Revival)

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [24 May],
	That so much of the Lords Message [19th May] as relates to the Liverpool City Council (Prohibition of Smoking in Places of Work) Bill [Lords] be now considered.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House concurs with the Lords in their Resolution.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]
	Message to the Lords to acquaint them therewith.

Private Bills [Lords] (Revival)

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [24 May],
	That so much of the Lords Message [19th May] as relates to the London Local Authorities (Prohibition of Smoking in Places of Work) Bill [Lords] be now considered.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House concurs with the Lords in their Resolution.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]
	Message to the Lords to acquaint them therewith.

Jessica Morden: What steps the Government plans to take to reform the electoral system for the National Assembly for Wales.

Peter Hain: The hon. Gentleman speaks with the same voice as the shadow Secretary of State, who wants, as the hon. Gentleman appears to want, to abolish the National Assembly for Wales and to go back to the kind of rule that we had under the Conservatives when they trampled all over Wale—and as result, every Tory MP was cleaned out of Wales in the 1997 election. Having said that, the hon. Gentleman was a very good member of the Modernisation Committee and I pay tribute to him for that—[Interruption.]

Andrew Dismore: My right hon. Friend will know that this is refugee week, which began in my constituency last Sunday with our local festival. Does he agree that refugee week provides an excellent opportunity to dispel the myths and disinformation that some circulate about refugees and asylum seekers, and to celebrate the enormous contribution that refugees have made over the years—indeed, over the centuries—to British life public and private, and economically, socially and culturally?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend is right in saying that we should always acknowledge the tremendous contribution made by migrants to this country over the years. It is important to recognise that, as is demonstrated by many in this House, many of us have ancestors who migrated from abroad. We recognise the strong contribution that migration makes, but it is also important to recognise that we have to take action to deal with asylum applications, which are now down by more than half, and to introduce the controls on immigration that we have indicated. This will allow us to continue to have people migrating to our country who we need for our economy, while making sure that proper and robust rules are in place. That is the right balance for today's world.

Jeremy Wright: Does the Prime Minister accept that busy village halls are often at the heart of thriving rural communities such as those that I represent in Ruby and Kenilworth? However, the huge increases proposed in the Licensing Act 2003—increases in paperwork and in the cost of entertainment licences, rising from £30 to more than £900—will put vital resources at risk. Will the Prime Minister do something about that?

Tony Blair: I do understand the hon. Gentleman's concerns. We tried to introduce a licensing regime that puts more power in the hands of local people. I understand the problems of village halls—I have heard about them myself—and we look further into them to see if anything can be done. Obviously, in the end, we need a licensing regime that pays its way.

Dawn Primarolo: The hon. Gentleman needs to be reminded that his party supported the tax credits, including the flexible system and the way in which that is approached. The ombudsman's report says:
	"This report does not suggest that the new tax credits system is in general disarray; on the contrary it recognises that, given the scale of the undertaking, its introduction has been broadly successful."
	It goes on to say that new challenges need to be met, however. The CAB's summary says:
	"We firmly support tax credits as a vehicle for directing substantial extra money towards lower income families".
	The issues thus revolve around administration.
	I shall address each of the six points that the hon. Gentleman made. First, he asked about adopting a response to claimants of clearly explaining their entitlement and what that is based on and, as it says in the ombudsman's report, working on a case-by-case basis. That was covered by my statement on 26 May and I reiterated the position at the beginning of my comments today. I have accepted that the ombudsman's point was correct and I have already started acting on that.
	The hon. Gentleman said that claimants should be made aware of their entitlement when dealing with disputed claims. Again, my statement on 26 May referred to that and my opening comments today confirmed what I said. I especially made the point about the suspension of disputed claims.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about writing off official error. He knows full well that in cases in which either an administrative or information technology error has been made by the Inland Revenue and it would be unreasonable to assume that the claimants did not realise that a payment had been made in error, that money has been written off. In my statement on 26 May, I made it clear that we needed to review the procedure and determine not only whether to suspend recovery until a dispute has been resolved, but how we communicate with claimants so that the Department can ensure that they know exactly what their entitlements are.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about the transfer of jobseeker's allowance and income support to the system. I have told him that the system is not in disarray, and that is what the ombudsman says. I have told the House repeatedly that we keep the transfer under careful consideration. We plan to start it later this year, but I assure him that if that is not the case for any reason, I will inform him and also the House.
	My accountability has been questioned. First, I have answered all questions about the matter, both written and oral. Secondly, I have made statements to the House. Thirdly, I have been involved in debates on the tax credit system in the House. Fourthly, I meet hon. Members and delegations from community and voluntary organisations to discuss exactly these points.
	As the hon. Gentleman said, his final question was fundamental. When he talks about the inheritance and the problems that families face, he must acknowledge that the system in place before failed to tackle child poverty, failed to respond to the needs and changing circumstances of families and failed to recognise the changing nature of the labour market. He does not realise that the income change for 300,000 of the people who have received overpayments is in excess of £10,000 per year. Is he seriously suggesting that if an overpayment is not disputed and the claimant is prepared to pay it back, we should not collect it? That is ridiculous.

David Laws: Is not the truth that the tax credit system has been in chaos and that Ministers have persistently been in denial about the extent of the problems, and that they still seem to be in denial? What is chaos if it is not 1.9 million people overpaid £2 billion of taxpayers' money that should not have been paid out, if it is not 700,000 underpayments and if it is not two thirds of the overpaid awards going to households that the ombudsman describes as on modest incomes? Is not the Paymaster General more concerned than the impression she gave about the conclusion in the ombudsman's report,
	"that the greatest difficulties"—
	as a consequence of these problems—
	"are suffered by the core group that the tax credit system is aimed at helping, namely families on low incomes"?
	Are not those precisely the people who are losing out as a consequence of the endemic overpayments in the system?
	Are there not three questions, in particular, on which we need clear answers from the Paymaster General? First, there is the vital issue of overpayments. Will the right hon. Lady clarify the statement that the Prime Minister made earlier in Prime Minister's questions, in which he appeared to give the impression that overpayments as a consequence of official error are to be written off. That was very different from what the right hon. Lady has told us. She knows perfectly well that there are a multiplicity of cases where the Inland Revenue has made the errors. Yet at the end of the day money is still being clawed back from people. What will be done to tackle that problem? How many of the overpayments due to official error will be written off? Can the right hon. Lady give us an absolute guarantee that from now on the system will be one of investigation first and recovery second, and not what we have had, which has been recovery first and then investigation?
	On a point of law, can the Paymaster General tell us whether she has received the legal advice that is referred to by the ombudsman in her report as to whether the Inland Revenue has been acting lawfully over the past year in the way in which the recovery policy has been applied? Can she give us a clear answer on that?
	On a second point, what is the right hon. Lady doing about the chaos of the computer system that has generated so many of these problems? When will that be resolved?
	On a third point, is the right hon. Lady more concerned than the impression that she gave in her statement about the ombudsman's observation that her report raises
	"the fundamental question as to whether"—
	a financial support system with such "inbuilt instability or uncertainty", can truly meet the needs of people on modest incomes? If it is so obvious that we should have the system that we now have, why did we have fixed awards under the working families tax credit and why were there fixed awards under the family credit system? Should not the right hon. Lady examine that issue seriously?
	On a final issue, I feel almost sorry for the Paymaster General. The system was introduced by the Chancellor and he has been very successful in claiming the credit—taking the credit, as it were—for the system of tax credits. He has left the Paymaster General to mop up all of the difficult issues that we have been discussing. Does the right hon. Lady accept that she is ultimately accountable, and that if these problems are not resolved over the next few weeks, which are affecting some of the most vulnerable families, she ultimately must accept the responsibility that comes with her office?

Dawn Primarolo: My hon. Friend may certainly suggest that. It is in line with the recommendations in the ombudsman's, the adjudicator's and the CAB's report and in line with the statement that I made about how I intend to proceed from my statement on 26 May. That is one of the issues that we need to address.

Dawn Primarolo: My hon. Friend is right. As he knows, the integration of the tax and benefits system has removed stigma and enabled people to move from unemployment into work. It has supported families, helped reduce the number of children in poverty and made sure that we have a flexible system that responds to families' needs. The choice is between a fixed, unresponsive, unfair system and a flexible system that responds to family changes. Within that equation, as he rightly identifies, we need to strike a balance on behalf of the taxpayer and define the limits of that flexibility. In the present system, all drops in income are automatically adjusted when we are notified, so that the family does not lose out. If there is any rise in income over £2,500 a year—a sum lower than that is not notifiable—the family should report an increase of income in year. That strikes a balance of generosity on behalf of the taxpayer and recognises our partnership and the responsibility of society to support children in families, while limiting the cost of the system for the taxpayer.

David Cameron: I beg to move,
	That this House believes that special schools play a vital role in meeting the needs of children with learning difficulties, and that parents should have more choice between special and mainstream schools; further believes that the Government should hold a proper review of the provision of special educational needs to cover concerns about the statementing process, the continued closure of special schools, concerns about bias in the law and central government pressure to pursue policies of inclusion when they are not always appropriate; and calls for a moratorium on special school closures until such a review has been published and properly debated.
	How we provide education and opportunity for those with complex needs is incredibly important. Those children include some of the most disadvantaged in the country and their families often face enormous stresses and strains in trying to bring them up and in getting what they need.
	There is much common ground on both sides of the House about what we should be trying to do. Last week, the Minister for Children and Families, who is not present today, said:
	"We need to ensure that the system can deliver as easily and accessibly as possible what individual parents want."—[Official Report, 16 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 381.]
	I agree with that point, but it is not actually happening.
	My argument is not with what the Government say about that issue, but with what they do and with what they are allowing to happen up and down this country: special schools are closing, mainstream schools are not coping and statementing has become incredibly bureaucratic and far too much of a battle for all concerned. Inclusion has gone too far and we badly need to stop, think and get this right.
	There is concern on both sides of the House on the issue. At last week's Education and Skills questions, the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) warned that parents' wishes are being completely ignored, saying:
	"The private company that a past Secretary of State put in to run education is closing the"
	special
	"school, threatening governors and taking no notice of parents".—[Official Report, 16 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 378.]
	How much more serious could the situation be? I am sure that we will hear more concerns today about what is happening on the ground.
	The Conservative approach is clear. We are not saying that inclusion is wrong—for many children, it is right and works well—and we are not saying that the concept of statements is wrong. We need a system that recognises and meets needs. However, the Government must recognise three things. First, the inclusion agenda has gone too far. A movement that was about redressing a balance is going beyond achieving that and is now being applied in many cases where it harms rather than helps. Secondly, the statementing system now has serious problems resulting in many children not getting the education and services that they need. Thirdly, as a result, we believe that the whole sector needs to be fundamentally reviewed.
	The Government's approach to these issues is simply inadequate and the audit of special schools that is under way is typical of that approach. The Labour election manifesto, "Britain forward, not back"—as always, no verbs, but catchy title—said:
	"We will undertake an audit of special school provision to give better comparative information to local authorities, head teachers and school governors as they plan future . . . provision."

Angela Smith: In a previous life, I was a council cabinet member for education in Sheffield, where we embarked on a programme of consolidation and rebuilding for good special schools. We stopped the closure of three schools because we listened to the parents and the professionals and realised that those schools had a longer life. Will the hon. Gentleman recommend that Leeds, a Tory authority, do the same?

Nadine Dorries: I should like to bring the debate back down to the real level. Jack Murray is a beautiful little eight-year-old boy in my constituency, and he has autism. As a result of inclusion, he is in fact excluded from school. This little boy, who needs education the most, has none. Will the Minister agree to meet me to discuss Jack's case, because his parents are on the edge of despair?

Jacqui Smith: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt) makes a crucial point about the importance of parents and of an individual's needs in the system, and I shall expand on that in a moment. I should now like to make a little progress.
	I disagree with the Opposition, in that I do not believe that we should focus on buildings and institutions. It would be more useful to set down the guiding principles of the system, then design and reform it to meet those principles, rather than making the maintenance of the status quo the guiding principle, which is the Conservative—in all senses of the word—approach. I do not believe that that will enable us to deliver for the needs of individual children. Our focus is on meeting the needs of all children, on extending parental choice, and on securing the highest possible standards and the best possible outcomes for children, young people and families.
	Those are ambitious goals, but rightly so. The task of achieving them is changing over time, as new challenges arise. For example, we have seen a significant increase in the number of children identified with autistic spectrum disorders over the past few years, as our health system becomes better at supporting very young children and babies. We are also seeing increasing numbers of children with profound and complex impairments and with learning difficulties. Because we are faced with that wide and evolving range of needs, it is important that we have a flexible range of provision that is able to meet those needs. That is what we are seeking to achieve.

Jacqui Smith: Yes, we should, and I shall explain how we are doing so.
	As I have said, we are making progress but we need to make more. That is why we are working, through the national strategies and through our response to the Tomlinson report, to encourage schools to personalise the curriculum. It must be accessible to all children, so that it provides all children with the best possible learning. That is why we are investing in our children, and not simply through the additional £1,300 per pupil that will have been invested between 1997 and 2007–08. This year there has been a 7.8 per cent. increase in local authority spending on special needs. That is why—here I come to the point made by the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd)—we need to build capacity in the teaching and education work force.
	We recently commissioned the Teacher Training Agency to produce a £1.1 million package of work to improve quality and choice in special educational needs training for teachers. We are working to provide a more effective continuous professional development and career path for teachers and special educational needs co-ordinators, and for heads. There are already many good, indeed inspirational, teachers working in the special needs field, and we need to ensure that their expertise feeds through to others. We have made an important start by providing 135 advanced-skills teachers who specialise in special educational needs to advise and support less experienced colleagues, 50 of whom are based in special schools.

David Cameron: The right hon. Lady has repeated what is in the document "removing barriers to achievement", which says that we only want to see special schools providing education for children with the most severe and complex needs. Is she saying that schools for children with moderate learning difficulties do not have a future?

Edward Davey: I welcome the fact that we are debating the important issue of special educational needs, which is not debated often enough in this Chamber. I am pleased that the Minister has broadened the debate to cover all aspects of SEN, and not just existing buildings. That was an important move, and I hope that my remarks will continue in that vein. At the end of her speech, she mentioned the percentage of children in special schools, and if I heard her correctly, she said that the number has increased. Perhaps I am talking about a different period from the one that she referred to, but according to her 10-year strategy, the percentage has gone down: from 1.5 per cent. in 1983 to 1.1 per cent. in 2004. Perhaps her ministerial colleague can clarify that for the record later on.
	In my first speech as education and skills spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, I need to pay a short tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis). He brought to that role 20 years of experience and understanding, as a former headmaster of secondary schools in Yorkshire. Indeed, he brought far more than that. He brought passion about education and made a real contribution to the education debate in this House. I know that he will continue to do so, and I am grateful to him for his advice and for his policy legacy.
	I would have liked to congratulate the Secretary of State for Education and Skills—if she were here—on her reappointment. We did in fact know each other before we entered this House, and we have discussed many policy issues in the past. I was also the student of her new ministerial colleague from No. 10, Lord Adonis. I gently advise her and other Education Ministers to challenge his latest theories and allegiances, as he has a tendency to change sides mid-way.
	I am not sure how long the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), the latest Notting Hill star pupil, will be in the class to learn—he has "head boy" elections to participate in. I did not expect him to start canvassing today, but he has. To be fair to him, he has done the House a service today. He introduced an important subject and spoke with balance, sincerity, conviction and understanding, and with the feeling that comes from his own experience. That was helpful.

Edward Davey: Not particularly, but I will deal with that point in due course.
	Whatever our disagreements on policy—we will doubtless have many—I want to acknowledge that the hon. Member for Witney has helped to put this subject on the political agenda, which is quite an achievement. He talked about the problems in the system and about the human side, on which he was right to focus. For many years, there has been a huge and unmet need for such provision, and some disturbing statistics suggest that that need is growing. The hon. Gentleman pointed to the strategy paper, which suggests that the Government think that numbers will decline as more such children go into mainstream schools. However, the demographics suggest that the need for SEN provision is increasing.
	Of course, the existing state system does provide excellent provision for many—indeed, in some cases it is superb, innovative and cutting edge—but many others experience huge frustration in trying to deal with it. I shall name three such problems, the first of which is the delays that parents experience in getting the initial assessment for their child. The Government's strategy in recent years talks about early intervention, but that is a bit of joke, given that it can take months—sometimes years—to get an assessment. When such statements do come, increasingly, they are worded imprecisely, so that the local education authority and any other providers can wriggle out of their legal duties. That gives cause for concern, and even when there is a precise statement based on a decent assessment, parents often find it difficult to enforce those rights. So the system is not working.
	There are inherent problems in dealing with this challenging issue, given the extreme variety of special educational needs. As the volte-face by Baroness Warnock has shown, one can have a change of heart, and people can have different opinions on this issue. I should point out to the hon. Member for Witney that the debate concerning special schools versus inclusion is something of a false debate. We need both, and we need to reach a consensus on that point. We need to explore the different forms of inclusion and of special schools. We need a continuum of provision, involving co-location and special units, for example.

Edward Davey: I acknowledge that it is happening, as the hon. Lady says, in some parts of the country, but in many other parts of the country it is not. In those circumstances, statementing is the only thing that parents have to look after their children now, here, today when they need special education. What the hon. Lady says is not an excuse for the Government failing to take action to improve the statementing system.
	The articulate and determined parents know that the law is there and some of them have the cash to help their children get statements, but what about the parents who do not know about the law and who do not have the cash? What about their children? By putting our heads in the sand about the statementing process now, we are denying the rights to education of a generation of children, which is simply not good enough. Ministers cannot ignore those problems and sit around waiting for the 10-year strategy to work—if, indeed, it does work.
	So what is the solution? Let me be honest: I have been in this job for just over four weeks, as has the hon. Member for Witney. I have just a few gut instincts about where the solutions lie; I do not have a blueprint. We put forward our policies at the election—smaller class sizes, more investment in teacher training, promoting special schools as centres of excellence. Those are all in place and I believe that they would all help. Nevertheless, as I read the Government strategy and talk to parents, I become convinced that more is needed. That is why we think that a comprehensive review is required. Unlike the hon. Member for Witney, I do not have a soundbite answer about a moratorium, but I shall put forward some of my first thoughts now and I hope that the Minister will respond to them in kind and with kindness as there may be quite a few flaws—but here they are.
	First, should not the assessment process for a statement be managed by an independent organisation—independent of local government, independent of national Government and independent of any of the providers? Preferably, it would be managed by a multi-discipline assessment centre with health and education professionals sitting around the table, working together and conducting the necessary tests in one or just a few days. The independence would remove the conflict of interests for the LEA and restore parents' trust. The one-stop centre approach would cut the horrendous delays and facilitate the early intervention that, to be fair, is at the heart of removing barriers to achievement.
	Parents will still want to challenge independent assessors through existing mechanisms, but there would surely be far fewer challenges, which would cut down on the bureaucracy of appeals and all the waste of time and money that goes with it. I would genuinely welcome the Minister's response to that idea and in a spirit of open debate I would be pleased to hear the downsides of the proposal.
	My second instinct on getting solutions is that we should look more carefully at the expensive side of special needs provision, as the Government are doing in the audit. We have heard a lot about that today and I welcome it. High costs are one of the key factors driving the hostility in the system, as local bureaucrats are worried that a statement may lead to an expensive provision. Ministers will doubtless say that the audit will look into best practice and seek ways of avoiding duplication and pooling resources. That is all well and good, but we must ensure that decisions reached by the audit can be questioned and not just taken by unaccountable quangos. The SEN partnerships want to ensure that any decisions coming from the audit are accountable.
	My idea is that the audit could be broadened. Could it not consider the idea that the costs of the very needy and expensive cases be transferred from the local authority's budget to the Department's budget? That would be a small centralisation, I accept, but an acceptable one because it is potentially liberating for local authorities and would enable them to plan their budgets more effectively. I do not know whether that would work. We would need to ensure that it was not a recipe for the councils passing the buck, which is where my idea for an independent assessment would kick in. National funding would be triggered only by an independent assessment that judged a child's needs as being above a certain threshold. There would be a real prize in that local authorities could focus on the needs of the less severe special needs children, which they should then be able to manage because of their greater certainty about the budget. There would also be much less friction with, and distrust by, the parents. Again, I hope that the Minister will respond positively.
	I mentioned a second systemic problem with statementing. To be fair, the 10-year strategy begins to address, but does not solve it. I am talking about the importance of multi-agency working. I accept that it is happening on the ground. In my own constituency, Kingston council set up with other partners a joint system for children with disabilities, but I have to say that it is slow, particularly in getting health providers around the table. One of the reasons for that lies in Whitehall, because Whitehall has not told the local health providers to make the joined-up approach a priority. I am not one for too many targets—I am not keen on the NHS target culture—but it seems that Health Ministers are developing targets for health providers without giving them a target for this particular aspect. I believe that Education Ministers should have a word with Health Ministers to join up the approach in Whitehall.

Edward Davey: That is what I said, if the hon. Lady was listening, but my point was that the people working at the grass roots to make that happen are being prevented from doing so because the Government in Whitehall are not joining up their actions, targets and policies. That is what local agencies are telling me.
	There are many other issues in the SEN debate that could be mentioned—the need for more specialist teachers, the need for more teachers in mainstream schools to be trained on special needs and so forth—but I need to focus on the core issues raised by the hon. Member for Witney, since it is his debate. Above all, I want to concentrate on his call for a moratorium on the closure of special schools. I confess that, initially, I was much attracted to that idea, which has the virtue of simplicity. It also has the good political virtue of promising much but delivering little. I do not know whether those are virtues that the hon. Gentleman prizes—perhaps we shall see—but the debate has shown already that this non-policy is unwinding fast.
	To start with, we have heard many examples of Tory authorities closing special schools, both now and in the recent past, despite that party's so-called national policy. My list includes some of the schools that have been mentioned, and it turns out that many Conservative councils do not agree with their national spokesman. We have heard about Worcestershire, but what about East Sussex? In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), the Tories are closing St. Anne's school. What about Tory-run Wandsworth, where Chartfield school in Putney and The Vines school in Battersea are being closed? What about Tory-run Hampshire, where the Hawthorns school in Basingstoke is being closed?
	Does the hon. Member for Witney have an answer to those questions? Before he gets up, I advise him that I will be looking at his answer to see whether he is able to ride those two horses successfully. At one stage in his speech he pointed to Gloucestershire, where the Tory authority has been able to keep schools open, or reopen them. On the other hand, however, he defended Conservative councils and said that the problem was all the fault of national Government. Which is it?

Edward Davey: No, for a whole set of reasons. The hon. Gentleman demonstrated his inconsistency on this point when I challenged him earlier in the debate. I asked whether he agreed with Baroness Warnock that some special schools were failing and needed to be reorganised, and he said that he did. Is he saying that if he were a Minister he would impose a national moratorium from Westminster? That would stop sensible reorganisations that improve education, that have been widely consulted on and which have the support of parents. The hon. Gentleman's contention is absolute nonsense.
	The hon. Member for Witney poses as a moderniser and reformer. Those Conservative Members on the Back Benches who support him talk about decentralisation and a relaxation of the grip of national Government, but then he shoots off in the other direction and says that he wants Whitehall to interfere. That does not wash, and he has been found out.
	We must remember that the whole point of this debate is to raise standards. Ofsted has found that some special schools are failing. The figures show that special schools are three times more likely to require special measures. That should worry us. There are many brilliant special schools, and I have three in my constituency—St. Phillip's in Chessington, Dysart in Surbiton and Bedelsford in Kingston—but other colleagues tell me that they have special schools in their constituencies that are not working so well. I think that the moratorium idea would get in the way of sensible local decision making, and that it would therefore be a mistake.
	The hon. Member for Witney has missed a huge opportunity by going for the soundbite policy. He could have joined me in criticising the Government about things for which they really are responsible—for example, the "Department for Learning and Skills" itself. I and many others believe that the Department is not fulfilling its role in investigating complaints against LEAs about their conduct of their SEN duties, and that it is not enforcing the law.
	Section 497 of the Education Act 1996 provides that people can make formal complaints to the Secretary of State when they believe that an LEA is acting illegally, and that the Secretary of State can intervene in such matters. However, the section of the Department that deals with such complaints is woefully understaffed, judging by the time taken for investigations and by the inability to enforce the law. That is why our amendment calls for a National Audit Office investigation, so that we can ask an independent body to look at what is really going on. Failing that, I hope that the Select Committee will address the matter.
	The hon. Member for Witney also failed to set out positive policies for special schools in his speech. We Liberal Democrats have shown our commitment to special schools, as our policy is to build them up as resource centres to support local schools in their specialist provision. We think that special schools could be linked to university research departments, so that they could benefit directly from—and be involved with—the latest research in special education. That model has been used in America very successfully.
	Perhaps we should excuse the flaws in the policy espoused by the hon. Member for Witney, partly because we all know that he is a man in a hurry. More charitably, we could say that he has helped catapult the issue of special needs up the agenda, and I pay tribute to him for that.
	When the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle), winds up the debate, I hope that she will not be complacent and make yet more attempts to claim that all the problems have been dealt with in the strategy. They have not, and it is time that the Government thought again.

Barry Sheerman: The debate has been most interesting and informative. That is due in part to its subject, and in part to the fact that the general election is now in the past. Education debates are inevitably rather partisan and nasty in the run-up to an election, but today's debate has been good.
	I welcome the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) to his post. I thought that his speech was very good, and my only slight resentment is that he gets three times as long as someone who has been chairman of the Select Committee for quite some time and who aspires to do that job again. However, I have eight minutes and I will try to use them well.
	I begin by confessing my relevant ignorance of this subject. In my time as Chairman, the Select Committee has not looked at special educational needs or special schools. Those matters were on our list but we have not got around to them, as other pressing topics demanded our attention. However, Baroness Warnock's speech and new paper lead me to believe that, if I have anything to do with it, the Select Committee must make this matter a very high priority.
	Sometimes I wish that parliamentarians had more confidence in their own institutions. Select Committees provide a very good vehicle for cross-party investigation of matters such as this. The hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) called for independent reviews by the NAO and for Government intervention, and even Baroness Warnock said that there should be an independent element. One gets a little tired of that, as matters such as this are perfect for investigation by the Select Committee, which always provides high-quality reports.
	I congratulate the hon. Member for Witney on choosing this topic for today's debate, and I know that he has a great interest in it personally, as do I. However, if I were to be critical I would say that his speech was spoiled by his determination to find a gimmick. In this case, his gimmick was his call for a moratorium. The hon. Gentleman is quite a sensible man, and wants to lead that dreadful bunch over there—a possible contradiction in terms.
	Imposing a moratorium would stop what we are doing in Kirklees. Some of our special schools were housed in pretty awful buildings, with bad accessibility. I would not want any child to be educated in those circumstances. We are closing some of those schools and providing buildings that offer the same capacity but which are modern and pleasant and with a nice environment for being taught in. I would hate that process to be stopped. Many local authorities around the country are undertaking similar improvements.
	Labour authorities have closed quite a few schools, although Conservative ones have closed more. However, authorities of all parties have closed schools for very good reasons. There has been a history of neglect in special school provision, and the ethos was that Victorian buildings were good enough for such schools. The priority was always to provide modern buildings for the other types of school. Although I think that the moratorium proposal is wrong, I applaud the fact that this matter has been drawn to the attention of the House and that it now has a higher profile.
	I have done a little bit of homework on this matter, mainly by reading Warnock, old and new. I also looked at what Ofsted said about special schools, and determined how much attention the Department paid to the matter in its most recent annual report. I remind the House of what Ofsted reported in respect of SEN provision and inclusive schools. It concluded that the proportion of SEN students in mainstream schools has not been affected by the inclusion framework, and that there were real difficulties in integrating pupils with social and behavioural problems. It added that there was a real conflict between meeting individual educational needs and "efficient education" for other children.
	The Ofsted report also found that between 2001 and 2003 there had been a 25 per cent. increase in the number of pupils in referral units—that is, units to which children can be removed from mainstream classes. It reported a wide variation in the quality of teaching offered to pupils with SEN, and that mainstream and special schools remained far too isolated from one another. That seems to make a pretty good case for the Select Committee considering the issue forensically. The DFES's 2004 departmental report contained a section on SEN, but this year's report includes only two passing references—so the Department needs our help, and I hope that we will be able to give it.
	In the short time available, I want to put such things in context. We are all guilty—are we not?—in education, as in any other policy area, of being victims of fashion. We get swayed by a fashion, and when a fashion is really pervasive and even pernicious, we do not even know that we are part of it. I remember naming our first daughter Lucy, without realising that the world and their wife were also choosing the same name at the same time. One year, the name "Lucy" did not figure at all in the "most favourite" list in The Times; the next year, the Perks in "The Archers" called their daughter Lucy. Hon. Members will notice that all my other children have very strange names.
	When we are part of a fashion, we are pushed this way and that by it. Every party in the House was swayed by the fashion of inclusion, of which the original Warnock view was part, and it has continued to be a very strong fashion. It is partly based on the truth that many of the people who come to me as their Member of Parliament are terrified that their children will be designated as different in any way. They want their children to go to a regular school, in a regular class, and they do not want any statement or any label to be put on their children.
	Another group of people come to see us as Members of Parliament, and they desperately want special attention, desperately want a statement and desperately want their children to go to special school if that is appropriate. That is the truth of the matter, and I do not know which sort of parent will turn up when I hold a constituency surgery; but, normally, one or other of them does.
	We have got to get the balance right, and enough evidence can be found in the reports that have already been written to say that there is a real worry about special schools and a real concern about statementing. How many of us do not know that there is a long wait for statements? There is a long wait to see an educational psychologist—and people do not even dream of seeing a clinical psychologist. If the problems are really deep, people can wait 14 months in Kirklees. I do not know how long the wait is in other areas. So there is a problem, but it is not one that should divide the parties or politicians. We should put our hand very quickly to holding a good Select Committee inquiry, to which all parties can give evidence.

Geoffrey Robinson: The whole House welcomes the opportunity to debate this issue, and it is good that the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) has raised it. We all know that he has a deep personal interest in the issue and commitment to it.
	On the other hand, it is a pity that the House will divide on the motion. I suppose that as it is an Opposition day motion, there is not much option, but it seems irrational to divide on the point about a moratorium. A blanket decision imposed on local authorities by central Government would go against the spirit of greater local independence and decision making, to which everyone in the House aspires. It is also irrational because we have no reasonable grounds for saying that there should be a moratorium. Some school closures may have to proceed for good reasons. Nor is there any reason for thinking that the Government are intent on closure per se, so that is an unfortunate point on which to divide the House.
	The hon. Member for Witney seemed puzzled about the number of school closures. The figures for the 10 years before 1997 and the eight years since do not mean much in themselves, and they show no predisposition to closure. I think the figures are 27 a year during the last 10 years of Conservative Government and 13 during eight years of Labour Government. They show no particular trend.
	I want to refer to the situation in Coventry, the city I represent. My fellow MP for the city, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham) is in the Chamber today. There are local proposals for the wholesale reorganisation of SEN arrangements in the city. When the council introduced the proposals, it pointed out that by law the guidance in the code must not be ignored. It is only guidance, however, and the important thing is how it is interpreted in practice. The guidance refers to "a stronger right" for children with SEN to be educated in mainstream schools. I have difficulty with the use of the word "right" in that statement because it suggests an overriding inclination, irrespective of anything else, to increase inclusion in mainstream schools. As a general point of principle and guidance, I do not argue against that objective but the presumption of a right makes it an obligation for local authorities to achieve it, which could override other considerations. The same pressure, allied to another to which I shall refer later, led the council to propose reorganisation. It stated that the ambition over the next few years was to replace all existing special needs schools with brand new purpose-built schools collocated on the sites of neighbourhood schools. That may be a good idea, but the presumption that there is only one way to proceed implies that a blueprint will be imposed locally, irrespective of the existing organisation and provision of services.
	The proposals are radical. They are out for consultation—although as we all know, things are seldom if ever changed as a result. It is proposed that 11 schools will be reduced to seven and that the capacity for children with special needs will be reduced from 850 to 600. Those are radical shifts. When I spoke to the local director of education, he told me not to worry because there was nothing too dramatic about the proposals and that they would be introduced gradually. I replied that a 30 per cent. reduction in capacity and in the number of schools was considerable by any standards. He then said, "But three of those will go into one school". I said, "Have you any idea of the problems that will cause for head teachers, teachers, and specialist staff in the schools?". He said, "Don't worry, we're not going to get rid of any staff", to which I replied that that would make things even more complicated.
	My appeal to the director of education is the same as my plea to the Government. Officials and the Government have become obsessed with structural reorganisation as an end in itself. That applies to foundation hospitals and primary care trusts. Every time we reorganise something we think it will be better but we never leave things in place long enough to judge the results before we move on to another reorganisation. I regret to say that that applied as much to the Conservative Government when they were in power, eons ago, as it does now. There is a continuum of obsession among the officials who administer our affairs.

Geoffrey Robinson: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend, who has great experience as he was a distinguished leader of Coventry council for many years before he joined us in this place.
	My appeal is not that we start with a new blueprint but that we consider what exists already and build on it, consistent with the principles and good guidance that the Government have given us. I disagree with the hon. Member for Witney; the guidance itself is not wrong.
	Two things have occurred since we embarked on the reorganisation in Coventry. First, we have heard Baroness Warnock's new views, which cannot be ignored, although she seems to be going from one clear-cut set of principles, which led us too far in one direction, to another position where she almost seems to be saying that what we did then was no good. Clearly, however, much good came from her first report.
	Secondly, a national audit is under way of the situation in local government. That will provide a wealth of information about what is good and what is working. We shall then be able to consider how to improve provision in future. We need to take stock. We need not a moratorium but a period to reflect on where we have done well—as we have done in many aspects. We need to see what is working and to examine the work of specialist teams and how—short of direct inclusion—the relationship between special needs schools and mainstream schools can be improved. All that work could be brought to bear on the reorganisation on which Coventry seems hell bent.
	When I put that point to the director of education in Coventry, he again told me not to worry because the authority had anticipated Baroness Warnock's report and had already adjusted its plans. He said that their proposals were bang in line with the views of Lady Warnock. When I asked him, "What about the National Audit Office?" he said that there was not even an audit for what was happening in Coventry. I assured him that I would not criticise the council but that I wanted to ensure that what was done corresponded to what was needed.
	Another thing that drives the obsession for reorganisation is the crock of gold made available by one of the Minister's predecessors, who told us that over the next 10 years there would be a complete rebuild of all secondary schools. Local authorities want to seize that crock of gold and build new schools, so the whole reorganisation process is about building. Building is important but it is not the only thing. We need a clear statement from the Government that refurbishment where necessary and appropriate will also qualify for the money. Like extensions and expansions, refurbishment should be part of the programme.
	I am grateful to have had the opportunity to speak, and I urge the Government to be clear in their guidance about the form in which the money will be made available and the purposes for which it is to be used, so that there will not be misconceived presumptions in local government that the money should be spent only on new buildings.

David Evennett: I am delighted to be able to participate in this important debate on special schools and special educational needs. We have had a high-quality debate. I enjoyed the comments made by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), as I always did was when I was previously a Member of the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) made an excellent speech. I am pleased to support the motion moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), who made a rational and moderate speech. I welcomed his analysis of the situation and his suggestions about how we should approach such an important aspect of education.
	I am worried about the Government guidelines on inclusion and their consequences. I was also disappointed by the opening remarks of the Minister for Schools. Much of this Government gives good talk but not an awful lot of action on the ground, when it matters. It was especially telling that the Minister failed to acknowledge the worth of special schools that cater for pupils with moderate learning difficulties or to address their future. The main thing that came out of her speech was the fact that she would not acknowledge that those schools do a wonderful job and are relevant. Conservative Members wish to develop such schools further.
	Education was a major issue during the election. People in my constituency with children with special educational needs, statements or special school places were worried about where this aspect of education is going. Much of the debate on education is about aspects of education other than this one, so I welcome the fact that we are debating such an important subject today.
	In my years out of the House, I worked as a lecturer in a further education college. That, together with the fact that I am a governor of both St. Paulinus Church of England primary school in Crayford and Townley grammar school for girls in Bexleyheath, has kept me in touch with statements and special needs in mainstream schools. I have subsequently learned quite a lot about the special schools in my borough: Woodside school, Shenstone school and Marlborough school. All do a fantastic job for their pupils, so the teachers, governors and parents must be congratulated on the hard work that they do. My borough is fortunate to have a wide cross-section of different schools offering different provision.
	A fact that has not been emphasised enough today, except by my hon. Friend the Member for Witney, is that it is pupils who matter most. We have had a lot of debate about buildings and finance, but we must never lose sight of the fact that we are talking about pupils with special needs who need to be developed so that they can have rich and fulfilling lives. We should put the needs of children first. Children are all different, which is why Conservative Members say that we cannot have one size for everyone because we believe in choice and diversity. Despite the good intentions of educationalists, when they produce theories they sometimes lose sight of the fact that we are talking about the needs of children and what their parents want.
	There has of course been a move towards inclusion for special needs children, which is right and welcome for children who can benefit from such mainstream education. If we can provide extra resources so that they can have a rich and fulfilling education in a mainstream school, that is really welcome because it is excellent news for both parents and children. However, if inclusion is just a politically motivated approach, it is not right. Including children in the mainstream when that is not in their interest is not good for parents, teachers, schools, other children in the establishments or, ultimately, the children themselves. If they do not get the advantages that they need, such as extra-curricular activities, extra provision or different provision, they will suffer.

David Evennett: No, we must give other hon. Members the opportunity to speak.
	The Government exert pressure to encourage inclusion by trying to get more children into mainstream schools. That is good in some cases, but we must analyse the current situation. We must determine what we think is best, where the resources can be used best and, ultimately, what is best for children. I am worried that children with severe or complex learning difficulties are being gradually moved into mainstream schools that are not appropriate for their needs.
	During the election campaign, parents told me that their interests were not being taken into account. They want a voice on what is going on with special educational needs, and they want a say in special schools. They raised with me on several occasions the process of statementing, which the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) highlighted earlier in an interesting part of his speech. The statementing process often takes too long. It is often too bureaucratic, and it has not achieved what parents want, which is the best for their children. We thus want the process to be examined.
	If inclusion is to be the theme of special needs provision, parents should be much more involved in the process. They deserve choice because they know what is best for their children. They should consult with the experts, rather than just being told what is happening. The Minister for Schools omitted to say that she wanted to involve parents in the process to a greater extent, look after children's interests and ensure that the best outcome is found for all, so I hope that the Under-Secretary will address that point.
	I hope that the Government will take on board several of the ideas put forward in the excellent speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Witney. They should take parents' views into account and examine the law that currently restricts choice—I think that it is biased against special schools. The current audit should cover all special schools; not just schools dealing with severe learning difficulties, but those dealing with moderate learning difficulties. There has been some banter about the word "moratorium", but if we are going to conduct a serious study, it would be useful to stop where we are at the moment instead of carrying on and finding that the study's findings come too late. A moratorium would thus be a good thing.
	I am worried about this aspect of education, but I am afraid that nothing that the Minister for Schools said gave me any confidence that the Government are considering it constructively and with an open mind. Parents and choice should be the top priority, but I am worried that there is a bias against special schools. I hope that the Under-Secretary will take on board some of the genuine concerns of Conservative Members and act accordingly.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Any debate about children with special educational needs is bound to be emotive. We are talking about real children and real families and there are many parents in my constituency whom I admire enormously for their dedication to their children and for the support that they give to the school that their child attends—it does not matter whether it is a mainstream school or a special school.
	It is important that we continue to provide special school education, but there has been a growing recognition among parents, teachers and society as a whole that mainstream education can deliver the same support as a special school, and that not only do the children with special needs benefit, but the mainstream school and the children who attend it also benefit, and all children learn that we are not all the same and that children with special needs should not be hidden away but are all part of an inclusive community where we can demonstrate that everyone makes a valuable contribution.
	As more and more parents have seen the benefits of mainstream education, more and more of them are making that choice, and that is why we have seen falling rolls at special schools. Parents of special needs children are naturally very protective of them, but most of them want their children to be independent, both when they are at school and when they grow up. That is possible only in an inclusive society that recognises difference but values everyone. In my constituency, the local educational authority has identified 26 different and diverse groups that have special needs, including learning difficulties, sensory impairments and physical disabilities. The LEA is striving to ensure that special educational needs provisions meet everyone's needs.
	I want parents to be able to make informed decisions about their preferences. To make that decision, parents need to be reassured that the same level of specialist support is available in mainstream schools as in special schools. I am sure that the national audit of SEN specialist services, support and provision that is under way will be an enormous help in assessing needs and provision.
	It is important that such decisions are made locally. LEAs, in partnerships with parents and schools, are closest to their communities and best placed to meet their educational needs. Although the number of parents opting for special schools in my constituency has declined, mainstream schools, are not suitable for some children. That applies even to specialist units within mainstream schools, but with more parents opting for mainstream schooling, we have to consider the viability of smaller special schools with falling rolls.
	My constituency falls within the Portsmouth LEA, and there are two particular special schools with falling rolls. One of the schools is in my constituency and the other is in Portsmouth, South. One is housed in a building that has difficulty in meeting the needs of access, mobility and health and safety. The other is on a limited site that is not suitable for expansion. Both schools have their own ethos and culture and both are fiercely proud of ownership. There is a fierce pride among parents, staff and pupils, who are prepared to defend their school to the hilt.
	Portsmouth LEA received £5 million targeted capital fund allocation for special needs allocation, and it was decided that the best way to meet the difficulties of the two schools was to close them both and build a new school. Inevitably, when the proposal was first mooted there was fierce resistance. Parents saw only what was happening to their school and were worried about how their children would manage. We all know that children with special educational needs need stability. The parents were worried about the effect that the change would have on the education of their children, along with the disruption that would inevitably occur.
	Parents want their special needs children to live as independent a life as possible. If the numbers in a school fall too far, there will be fewer teachers, so teachers have to hold responsibility for two or more subjects, as well as a similar number of whole-school aspects such as assessment. That means that they would be spending a great deal of time preparing schemes of work and moderating the work of their colleagues, which could mean little time left for out-of-school activities. Very small schools find it more difficult to offer the depth and breadth of subjects expected by Ofsted, which I think should be an entitlement of all pupils, whether in mainstream or special schools.
	As the consultation process moved forward, people began to see the benefits that would accrue from a brand-new purpose-built building housing the full range of facilities best to serve the curriculum and learning needs of children with severe and complex learning difficulties and disabilities while meeting the highest specifications of access and mobility.
	The ethos and culture of a school do not come from its buildings, but from the staff and leadership of the school. In Portsmouth, the staff and leadership will come together in the new school. From September 2006, out of the closure of two special schools will come a better facility in a purpose-built building delivering a curriculum and out-of-school activities that are designed to give these special needs pupils the tools and experiences that they will need so that, as adults, when they leave school, they can live as independent a life as possible. Surely, that is what special needs education is all about. I am concerned that, if the Opposition had their way and there were a moratorium on the closure of special schools, those children in my constituency would be denied their brand-new school and all the opportunities that go with it.

Judy Mallaber: That is shameful, and it shows the contrast between what happens in some Conservative authorities and what happens in my Labour-controlled authority. The Opposition are plain wrong to suggest that closing special schools is Labour policy, when we are seeking to provide choice and to examine need.
	In my constituency, the Holbrook autism centre, which has skilled staff and good resources, caters for severely autistic children. Derbyshire county council has allocated the centre an extra £1.3 million to allow it to take 12 extra students, but it has also developed enhanced resources provision for autistic children in three other mainstream schools in the north of the county and at a school near Aldercar school. Aldercar, incidentally, does not just cater for middle-class children—it is in the most deprived part of my constituency and does good things for children of all abilities.
	Derbyshire is providing extra help and resources not only for a specialist autism centre in my constituency but for autistic children in mainstream schools. How on earth can one say that that sounds like Labour refusing to allow parents choice? That is simply not the case.
	Such decisions are not easy. A woman came to see me with her child, who had Asperger's. She was completely torn. The experts were suggesting that he should go to mainstream school to make the most of his educational abilities, but she wondered whether he should go to a special residential school to help him with the problems that Asperger's children have with their social skills.
	This morning, before the debate, when I was checking some of the facts with the head of special needs in Derbyshire, he told me: "We are more concerned with outcomes than with any dogma. We are concerned with pupils making progress and with meeting parents' and pupils' wishes and needs." That is what we are trying to do, with considerable difficulty, in Labour Derbyshire. Please do not let us put Derbyshire into a straitjacket based on dogma or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who is the former, and possibly future, Chair of the Education and Skills Committee, said, on gimmicks. It is not helpful to lurch from one view to another. As Baroness Warnock rightly reminded us, some children need to go into special schools; we need to consider her report carefully. I am sorry to say that we should not engage in Tory leadership battles, no matter how sympathetic we are about the personal experience and family situation of the hon. Gentleman concerned.
	These are difficult and complex decisions, and parents and LEAs agonise over them in the best interests of their children. Let us not allow them to become a political football—they deserve better.

Anne Milton: I will be brief, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	This has been a fascinating afternoon. I find it interesting that there is a fair amount of agreement in the House. I am a new Member, but I would love it if someone set out his or her ideas and then said, "Hands up those who agree with this". I think we would turn out to be in agreement on many issues.
	One thing on which we definitely agree is that inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream schools is a worthy ideal, and I think that for many it is the best option. Inclusion of all children, however, is not the right idea. It is generating a huge amount of fear and mistrust among teachers at the moment: they do not feel that they will be able to cope. I have seen teachers in tears because they are desperate. They say, "I went into mainstream education because that is what I feel I can do. I do not feel that I have the skills to meet the requirements of children with special needs."
	I think that there is a problem with perception. Labour Members seem to believe that a moratorium will somehow stop everything, that we are going to go backwards, and that we think inclusion is a bad idea. That is not the case. We are saying what a Labour Member said earlier: we are saying, "Let us stop for a minute and take stock." This is a hugely complicated issue.
	My constituency contains some brilliant schools for children with special needs. Gosden House school deals with children with moderate learning difficulties. We also have Pond Meadow, which is to co-locate with a secondary school, and Thornchace, which is a very special school for girls with emotional and behavioural disorders. Many of the girls are looked after, many have been excluded from mainstream schools, and many have already failed in pupil referral units. That school faces closure, which is devastating for staff, pupils and parents, because they know that they have something special to give to very special girls which is to be taken away from them.
	The local education authorities do not want prescriptive messages from Government. They think that they have to pursue inclusion with all their might, which is why we are seeing special schools close. Often, aspirational theory translates into poorly conceived practice and that is what we are seeing now.
	We have heard lots of talk of joined-up thinking and partnership working. It makes me so angry, because it does not necessarily translate into something that works on the ground. Ministers can say all the words they want, but what parents and children want to know is: is it working on the ground? A moratorium is the right answer because we need to take stock. There is too much uncertainty out there about how to meet the needs of children with special needs for us to continue. We need to say, "Hang on a minute, what do we agree on, what is right?" and examine the whole sector.

Mark Hoban: I begin by congratulating those Members who have taken part in this excellent debate, with Members drawing on their constituency experience of special education. In particular, I want to congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper), for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett), for Newbury (Mr. Benyon), for Guildford (Anne Milton), and for Shipley (Philip Davies). My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley has perhaps presented the Government with a challenge. If they are saying that there is no bias in favour of inclusion—that there is no bias against special schools—they should be prepared to look at Bradford council's plan to expand the number of places in special schools at both primary and secondary level. That will be a test of their special educational needs policy.
	The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), the former Chairman of the Education and Skills Committee, was right to suggest that the first topic for the re-formed Committee should be special educational needs. We also heard from the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson), the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry), who is my constituency neighbour, as well as from the hon. Members for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber), for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith), and for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). They demonstrated that the problems that we face span all parts of our nation.
	I want to tackle three fundamental propositions that are at the heart of this debate. First, children with special educational needs require a proper assessment to establish how much additional support and help is needed to enable them to realise their full potential. Secondly, although for many children such support can come in the form of a mainstream school place, it is not the answer for every child. Parents need choice, as the hon. Member for Amber Valley said. Thirdly, if we are to give children the right support, it is vital that no options be closed to them.
	Let us consider first the need for a proper assessment of children's needs, and in particular the statementing process. As the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough pointed out, the statementing process is far from perfect. Many parents do not consider it fair. A recent survey by the Down's Syndrome Association pointed out that many local education authorities
	"are accused by parents of cynically manipulating the statementing process to deny adequate support to all but the most vocal."
	The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) referred to the adversarial nature of the process. Parents are pitted against LEAs and expensive advisers are employed by both sides, so that parents can argue the case for the support that their children need.
	Many parents believe that the level of provision is not just about meeting the child's needs, but about responding to the pressures on LEA budgets. A recent report by PACE—Parents Autism Campaign for Education—noted:
	"Parents' perception of their LEA was generally negative."
	Many parents expressed concerns about their LEA's competence and about the fact that LEAs were less concerned with the education of their children than with budgets. The conflict of interest within LEAs—between their role as funder of special education and their role as assessor of needs—has led many parents to doubt the reliability with which authorities go about the statementing process.
	I was pleased to hear that the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton agrees with us that we should look further into the possibility of having independent assessment of special educational needs. When parents look around the country, they see huge variations in the proportion of children statemented in different LEAs. In Nottinghamshire, only 1 per cent. of children are statemented, while in Halton it is 4.6 per cent. How can parents have confidence in a system that produces such variable outcomes across the country? Despite parents' frustration with statementing, they also see it as vital, for it establishes a guarantee of entitlement, without which they fear that their child's support could be taken away at a moment's notice. We need to increase parents' trust in the process.
	It is not just parents who find statementing to be an unsatisfactory process. County councillors have also expressed their concern that the statementing process is too bureaucratic. It is time consuming and frustrating for them, as well as for parents. Until trust in the statementing process is established, parents will also see it as a battle to get the best resources for their children—an adversarial system that is time consuming and wasteful, yet vital if they are to get the guarantee of help that they need.
	If we are to ensure that children achieve their full potential, we must ensure that the support that they get is tailored to their needs. There is a consensus across the House about the importance of early intervention. I have seen for myself the excellent work that the Elizabeth Foundation does with young children born with a hearing impairment. It tries to support children at an early age so that they can continue in full-time mainstream schools rather than have to go to a school for the deaf or a unit for children with hearing impairment.
	Earlier this year, I went to the Battledown early years centre, which was faced with closure by the Lib-Lab alliance on Gloucester county council—the same people who proposed to close two moderate learning difficulties schools in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean. Battledown did everything that we ask from such a centre: it assessed the needs of children early and provided them with the support intervention that they needed so that, where possible, they could go to a mainstream school. Without that early assessment and intervention, those children were being set up to fail in mainstream schools. Thankfully, in that case, the centre was reprieved by the adjudicator. If we believe in early intervention, we cannot afford to lose centres such as Battledown, which help to tackle special needs when children are young.
	Members on both sides of the House have argued that it is wrong to adopt a doctrinaire approach either that only mainstream is right or that only special schools are right. We need to get the provision right for all children. I fear that what we have seen over recent years is a dogmatic belief in the importance of inclusion. Yet the evidence tells us that mainstream does not always benefit all children. The Ofsted report, "Special educational needs and disability: towards inclusive schools", found:
	"Few schools evaluate their provision for pupils with SEN systematically so that they establish how effective the provision is . . . A minority of mainstream schools meet special educational needs very well . . . The teaching seen of pupils with SEN was of varying quality".
	Clearly, there is an issue about the quality of educational provision for children with special educational needs in mainstream schools.
	Whenever I visit special schools, I meet children who have been written off in mainstream, but who are flourishing, thanks to the expertise and care available in special schools. I visited the Mary Hare grammar school for the deaf in Newbury, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury referred, earlier this year. I met a young man there who had been written off as a failure by his mainstream school. He was stuck at the back of class and could not participate in lessons, but he is now heading off to university because of the expertise and skills of the Mary Hare school. Special schools are very important. Indeed, the Mary Hare school is also a training centre for teachers seeking a post-graduate qualification in teaching the deaf. If we lose those schools, we lose that expertise, and the opportunity to share it with other schools.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Witney used two statistics in his speech to illustrate how mainstream schools do not always work. He said that a child with a statement is far more likely to be excluded from school than one without, and that many more children with statements switch from mainstream education to special schools than the other way around.
	I make those points not to argue that inclusion is invariably wrong, because it is not. Inclusion can be right and it can work, but not always. Alternative provision needs to be available, so that children can get the support that they need. We must be able to maintain choice. Parents should be able to decide, where appropriate, whether a child with special educational needs should attend a mainstream or a special school. Closing special schools removes that choice.
	That choice is also constrained by the presumption in favour of mainstream in the Education Act 2001. I refer again to the Department's guidance on this matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Witney mentioned it before, but the House needs to remember that it has an impact on what happens in LEAs and on how they respond to the needs of children with SEN.

Mark Hoban: No, as the hon. Lady spoke earlier. Time is short and many points arose in the debate that remain to be covered.
	The Department published the document "Inclusive Schooling" in November 2001. It states that the starting point is always that children who have statements will receive mainstream education. That sets the direction of travel for LEAs, which make mainstream education the first choice for parents and often limit the information available to them about special schools. As a result, parental choice in the matter is restricted.
	Why do parents want that choice? For some, the principle is important, but other parents' experiences of mainstream education have been unsatisfactory. In its brief for today's debate, the Special Educational Consortium pointed that the mainstream does not offer a ready welcome to a child or understand a child's impairments and educational needs. It says that parents have difficulty in securing appropriate provision in mainstream schools, and that there are problems with getting appropriate support from other sources.
	Parents choose special schools because they believe that they can meet their children's needs better than mainstream schools. Yet they are often under pressure to accept a place in a mainstream school because that is what the legislation and the guidance say that they should be offered.
	Most under threat are the choices available for parents of children with moderate learning difficulties. The Government recognise that special schools have a role for children with a severe impairment, but there is a lot of concern about the fate of schools dealing with moderate learning difficulties. As my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) pointed out, two MLD schools were closed in Gloucestershire. My hon. Friend the Member for Witney challenged the Minister for Schools at the start of the debate about the role and future of MLD schools. He asked her directly for her view of what the future held for such schools, but she ducked the question and hid in generalities.
	The Minister's response made it clear that MLD schools have little future under this Government, as the terms of reference for the audit of special schools also indicate. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State, when she responds to the debate, will correct that impression, and that she will give parents of children attending schools specialising in moderate learning difficulties an assurance that their future is safe under this Government.
	We also need to understand what help is available, and what is effective. The Opposition believe that we need a review of special educational needs provision to ensure that children's needs are met. In the meantime, we must ensure that there is a moratorium on the closure of special schools. Those schools need to remain open while the review is conducted. Until we clear up the uncertainty and understand what is happening in the sector, we cannot move forward with the closure of special schools.
	The debate presents us with a real choice. Do we listen to the concerns of parents, teachers and children in special schools that they are being denied the ability to choose between mainstream and special schools? I believe that supporting the motion will send out a clear message to parents, children and teachers that we care about the education available to children and believe that there is a proper role for special schools. In contrast, the Government are in danger of letting down children with special educational needs.

Maria Eagle: It is a pleasure to respond to the debate and to follow the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban). I am not sure how much else we will agree on, but I agree that this has been an excellent debate. I very much welcome the interest of all hon. Members who have participated today. I congratulate the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) on raising this important subject, which I should be happy to talk about as often as the House wishes.
	The Government have a commitment to improve the life chances of disabled people and to ensure that the enormous extension of disability civil rights legislation that we have implemented during the past eight years results in real improvements in outcomes for disabled people. That commitment extends to educational opportunity and to disabled children, as well as to disabled adults, as it clearly should.
	We all know that a good education is key to enhancing life chances, and the Government have recognised that by extending to education the operation of the right for disabled people not to be discriminated against on the grounds of their disability—something that the original Disability Discrimination Act 1995 did not do. That is the purpose of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001. It is not, and was not intended to be, some kind of lurch into political correctness—a phrase to which the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) unfortunately referred in his remarks.
	The 2001 Act is intended to provide a way to deal with the fact that society is increasingly realising the importance of not writing people off, and ensuring that all our citizens have the opportunity to develop to their full potential and to participate in all aspects of life. For disabled children, society has come to realise—it did not always do so in the past—that we must aspire for them as much as we do for any children, that we must nurture their potential and ambition and that we must remove the physical and attitudinal barriers that still too often get in the way of their being the best that they can be and participating fully in all aspects of life in our society.
	That is the context in which we hold our debate today, and I hope that the hon. Member for Witney and I can agree about that. We are asking how, not whether, we can do the best that we can to support disabled children. I welcome this development; it is big a change in society's attitudes to disability over those displayed in previous decades. It is something that we as a nation should be proud of, and we should be trying to improve on it.
	The hon. Member for Witney raised some specific issues, particularly in relation to schools and inclusion. Before I deal with those points and do my best in the time available to deal with some points made by other hon. Members, I should reiterate the context in which we are taking such action. Progress has been made. According to Ofsted, between 2000 and 2003, the proportion of children with special educational needs judged to be making good progress grew from 54 to 73 per cent. in primary schools and from 43 to 71 per cent. in secondary schools. I doubt whether we could identify any other period when such rapid and significant improvements have been made by such children.
	We should all welcome those improvements, which are the result of sustained focus, sustained action and increased resources being put into the sector in recognition of the importance of improving outcomes for those children. The Government have been responsible for some of that, but local education is organised locally, and many local education authorities and dedicated people in localities have also been responsible for making such progress.
	The hon. Member for Witney accepts that progress has been made. He said so in a debate in Westminster Hall last year. Although he was not concentrating on that aspect today, I am glad that he has acknowledged it. He is nodding now, which is good. He says that the Government's policy is one of inclusion at any cost and that, as a result, special schools are being closed. The Government's policy is one not of inclusion at any cost, but of choice for parents, so that they can choose either mainstream education where they want it and where it is appropriate—many of them make that choice, and it is appropriate—or specialist provision where that is more suitable.
	It is categorically not the Government's policy to close special schools and enforce inclusion whether or not it is right for the individual child. Indeed, since the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 Ministers have not had the power to make decisions on school reorganisations and closures; those decisions are made locally. Nor was there any opposition from the Conservatives to devolving that responsibility to localities at the time. Furthermore, figures show that the rate of closure of special schools has halved since the change was made. Between 1986 and 1997, some 234 special schools closed. I gently remind the Opposition that it was their Ministers who made those decisions. Since 1997, some 93 special schools have closed, but on the basis of local decisions.
	Many Members have powerfully pointed out that parents are concerned about the closure of any local school, but particularly special schools, which parents often feel they want to defend because they know and understand the quality of the provision there. I fully understand those concerns but make two points in response. First, local authorities have a duty to secure sufficient schools for the children in their area and must have particular regard to the need for SEN provision. When setting out how they will undertake that provision, they must listen to the views of parents. When closure is proposed, consultation with parents must occur. If there is a dispute, an independent adjudicator makes the decision. Some Members have pointed out that that process sometimes results in a change, and many Members will be aware of cases where plans have changed, sometimes out of all recognition, as a result of the consultation process.
	That is not to argue, and I do not, that the process always results in the outcome that parents want. In Wandsworth, to refer to a recent example, many parents were dissatisfied with the outcome of the process, so I do not argue that it always results in perfection. Nor do I argue that SEN provision is perfect, but it is better than it was and we are determined to improve it.
	The hon. Member for Witney asked for a moratorium on closures, as did many of his hon. Friends. That might look good in a speech or a press release but I have major doubts as to its efficacy. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State said in her opening remarks that the hon. Gentleman was from the progressive left of the Conservative party. I think I would describe him as being from the statist left because he is actually arguing for the re-nationalisation of decision making on school reorganisation. He will be going into the leadership contest with the battle cry, "The civil servant in Whitehall knows best". I wish him luck in his quest. He is a brave man.
	A moratorium would require primary legislation, so it will not be a swift option. Such a move would blight many excellent reorganisations, whether or not there was local controversy, for an indeterminate length of time.

Maria Eagle: I appear to have hit a raw nerve. I was considering the hon. Gentleman's policy of a moratorium, which would be centrally imposed and against the wishes of many local authorities. The hon. Member for Shipley talked about collocation of schools, as did the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon), but that could not be done if there were a moratorium. The House and the Government would be imposing the moratorium from the centre, so that prescription would not be as efficacious as the hon. Member for Witney appears to think.
	The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of the national audit of low incident SEN support services and provision. He asked in particular why the audit was not wider in scope, a point made by several Members, including the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey). There has been an exhaustive review of special schools, which reported as recently as March 2003. The findings of that independent working group were incorporated in our strategy for SEN, "Removing Barriers to Achievement", published a year later, following extensive consultation. In my previous role in the Government, I was a signatory to that document. There has been extensive consultation before and since with teachers, schools, pupils, parents, local authorities, the voluntary sector and others, although my officials tell me that Conservative Members did not contribute. Perhaps they should have done, because we could then have heard some of their ideas at the time at which the review for which they now call was actually going on.
	The Audit Commission raised its views on statementing and the success, or otherwise, of special education in its 2002 report Work has been ongoing, so I am glad that the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats have decided that it is about time that we had a review, albeit belatedly. However, work has been going on over the years and we have come up with our strategy, which we are now implementing.
	We can all agree that it is a priority to ensure that all children reach their full potential and that the education system is a key determinant of our success in reaching such a goal. We can all agree that there is an emerging consensus that disabled children must have the same expectation of success and the same aspirations to develop to their full potential as any other children. If we do not ensure that that happens, we will be failing those people as a nation. We want them to take their rightful place in our society as the valuable citizens we all know them to be.
	The Government are investing substantial additional resources in education—some £1,300 extra per pupil, or a 45 per cent. increase in real terms between 1998 and 2008. We want things to work for disabled children just as much as for their non-disabled peers. We are determined to ensure that the progress identified by Ofsted continues, so I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will support us in that endeavour.

Oliver Heald: The United Kingdom has traditionally held a reputation as a beacon of democracy and fair play, the mother of all Parliaments. We have led the way in building foundations for democracy across the world. We have tended as a country to occupy the moral high ground and even to lecture other parts of the world on democracy. But the integrity of our own recent general election was dependent on overseas observers for the first time, from places like Serbia and the Ukraine.
	Although Ministers insist that there was no widespread evidence of systematic election fraud, public perception has changed over recent months and years. It is clear that the Government's modernisation programme in this area has resulted in a collapse in public confidence and compromised the perceived integrity of the British electoral system. As the right hon. and hon. Members who are shaking their heads will know, a MORI poll in March this year found that 54 per cent. of the public think that postal voting has made it easier to commit election fraud, and an even higher proportion are concerned about fraud with electronic voting.
	After the 2003 local election all-postal voting pilots, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives warned the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford):
	"there is increasing concern about electoral fraud . . . we consider that the current position runs the risk of the whole electoral process being discredited. Confusion already exists among electoral practitioners and election agents, and a major scandal could bring representative democracy into disrepute."
	The Government simply ignored its strongly worded warnings.
	In the June 2004 elections, the Government imposed widespread all-postal voting in the face of cross-party and Electoral Commission opposition, choosing pilot regions on the basis of partisan advantage. The elections descended into such administrative chaos that even in the Deputy Prime Minister's own area, Hull, the election court had to annul a decision.
	A judge recently highlighted the inherent risks in the current rules on postal voting, attacking Ministers for being in a state of not simple complacency, but denial:
	"that there are no systems to deal realistically with fraud . . . would disgrace a banana republic".
	New Labour should reflect carefully on those comments.
	In 2004, the Labour party official postal-voting handbook called for Labour activists to build their own ballot boxes to take to voters' doors:
	"You could even have a ballot box for people to put their votes in which you can then deliver to the returning officer before close of poll. If your volunteers are wearing Labour stickers or rosettes it is unlikely that supporters of other parties will give you their votes."
	Public confidence in the electoral system continued to decline in the 2005 election, as evidenced by the extraordinary scenes in Bethnal Green and Bow. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway) has told me that he is on tour in the north of England and cannot speak in this debate, but when he gave evidence to the London Assembly, he discussed
	"a major operation to bloat the electoral register with non-existent electors as part of a dirty tricks operation.",
	and accused new Labour of
	"ruthlessly using bullying, blackmail, postal votes operations—all the black arts you could imagine."

Nigel Evans: At least 100 of my constituents wish that they had had postal votes, because they were refused access to a polling station because of huge queues and insufficient clerks to cope with demand. I have made representations to Sam Younger to ensure that local authorities have extra people available to allocate to areas of heavy demand. Does he believe that people like to go to polling stations to vote, which is a view that I have heard expressed on the doorstep?

David Heath: I do not want the hon. Gentleman to move too far away from his friend, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway). When he spoke to that hon. Gentleman, did he discuss that fact that, uniquely in modern history, he was elected with the support of only 18.4 per cent. of the electorate in his constituency? Does the hon. Gentleman believe that that is a genuine reflection of the political views of the people of Bethnal Green and Bow?

Oliver Heald: That is the sort of point that one might wish to address in a serious way had it come from any other part of the House, but it is rich coming from the Liberal Democrats, who believe in proportional representation, which can lead to extremist parties getting elected with only 5 per cent. of the vote.
	Forced all-postal voting has been condemned by the Electoral Commission in two major reports and the public have no confidence in it. Is the Minister really unable to make the commitment that we have seen the end of it? Many Members of all parties are old-fashioned enough to think that there is something special about the traditional method of voting using the properly controlled polling station and the ballot box, and that if somebody wishes to use postal voting, that should be their choice, not something that is forced upon them. Even those who support it want it to be properly controlled.
	Conservative Members also have concerns about the future use of other pilot methods, including remote electronic voting. We believe that the technology for e-voting is very insecure and that all the problems that one gets with postal votes would apply to the issuing of PIN numbers. One would end up with a double danger, not just a single one.

Stephen McCabe: Given the hon. Gentleman's concerns about postal voting, how many votes does he calculate that the Tory party secured during the general election as a direct result of the mailshots from the Leader of the Opposition that requested individuals to fill in a postal ballot form, and, if they could not do it themselves, to find a friend to do it? Does he think that that is a strange strategy to employ in relation to a system to which he is so opposed?

Oliver Heald: It would be surprising had we not always said consistently, from the beginning, that we are not against postal voting—we are against ill-regulated postal voting that is not properly controlled. That is why today, as before, we propose that there should be proper safeguards, which even now the Government are not prepared to introduce.

Oliver Heald: I cannot go into the details of electoral petitions any more than the hon. Gentleman can because of the rules of this place. If he is satisfied that there is no risk, given the events in the local elections of 2004, he is one of a small number of people in that category.

Eric Pickles: Does my hon. Friend accept that false entries on the electoral register are not made simply to influence membership here or on councils or to entertain tabloid journalists but that registration is a prerequisite of establishing a credit rating? The problem is on a much wider scale than electoral fraud.

Oliver Heald: That is true. Examples of individuals who were not entitled to vote came up during the election campaign, but they had tried to register not in order to vote but to apply for credit. I do not mind if they want a platinum card, but I mind that the risk exists.
	Recently, The People—that great organ—conducted an analysis of the electoral roll. It uncovered names such as Donald Duck and Jesus H. Christ. Perhaps they are genuine, but I suspect that the entries at a student address in Southampton, including Hooty McBoob and Gailord Focker, while not evidence of sinister malpractice, are not. One does suspect, however, that these people do not exist.
	Mainland Britain needs the Northern Ireland system of individual registration. In the Province, voters need to provide a signature, a date of birth and a national insurance number to register. The national insurance number is used to check that the elector exists. Such identifiers are then used to verify postal votes. Ministers were initially reluctant to use national insurance numbers, but there was considerable debate on the issue in the other place. I pay tribute to my noble Friend Lord Glentoran in that regard. The Minister in the other place, Lord Williams of Mostyn—whom we all miss and who was a very good spokesman for Labour in the other place—accepted the argument that there was no independent method of verification. He insisted that national insurance numbers should be used, which was the right thing to do.

Oliver Heald: It is hard to tell whether the situation has got worse or whether it has always been bad, but that is not the point. The point is that, if the Government are going to introduce a system of mass postal voting and want to leave open the option of all-postal voting, as the Minister does, we must have a register that we can rely on. At the moment, we do not have one, which is why we want to implement certain changes.

Oliver Heald: I believe that it is a fundamental right to be able to choose to vote in the traditional way.
	At the general election, the Conservative party scored more votes than Labour in England, but won 93 fewer seats, but that is not an argument for proportional representation, as The Independent has claimed. The use of PR in Britain has already undermined democratic accountability, without bringing about any increase in electoral turnout. It also prevents voters from removing an Administration, in that it creates perpetual coalition Government. An unpopular Administration can be kept in office by a minor party, despite the desire of the people to kick the rascals out.
	Proportional representation also leads to a highly disproportionate relationship between the number of votes cast and the share of Executive power by making minority parties the power brokers in Government. It also destroys the constituency link between the elected representative and their voters. Under first past the post, each voter can identify the person responsible for looking after their interests. Under PR systems, either constituencies are massive with multiple members or there is a group of representatives selected from a party list, accountable primarily to their political party. PR systems can allow candidates to be elected with as little as 5 to 8 per cent. of the vote, opening the door to extremists. A ridiculous situation can arise in which the most popular local politician is not elected and no one's vote counts for anything, because every vote is simply a mandate for negotiation.

Mark Tami: I agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman said about PR, but he obviously wants to put more obstacles in the way of participation in voting. Does he accept that we must do something about the hundreds of thousands of people who are not on the register? Should we not encourage them to get on it?

Oliver Heald: I am in favour of proper campaigns to ensure that as many people as possible who are entitled to vote register to do so. If the changes that I suggest were introduced, it might be a good thing for an extra effort to be made to find those people and ensure that they register. It might even be a good idea to canvass twice during the year. What I do not accept is that people who are not entitled to vote should be able to register. It is completely unacceptable for registers to be inaccurate by as much as 10 per cent.
	In the 2005 general election, across England, the average electorate in constituencies that elected Labour MPs was 67,500, while in Conservative constituencies the figure was 73,000. Boundary Commission regulations should be amended to ensure that maintaining an equal quota has primacy over other considerations, and they should allow county boundaries to be crossed. There should be more up-to-date information about the size of electorates towards the end of the boundary review process to avoid the drawing up of constituencies on the basis of data from the start of the review that subsequently becomes out of date. That would be a fairer system, as it would ensure that each elector had the same level of parliamentary representation.

Oliver Heald: I think that the hon. Gentleman and I agree that we need a much more active campaign to ensure that people who are entitled to vote are registered to do so. What is not acceptable is a situation in which, typically, there are inner-city seats with 51,000 electors, and county and rural areas where the average is 73,000 or 74,000. That is not equality between electors. Each elector should have the same level of parliamentary representation.
	It has become clear that the Government's obsession with electoral modernisation has compromised Britain's traditional reputation for free and fair elections, and undermined the integrity of the system and public confidence in it. We were proud in this country to put behind us the electoral practices in the rotten boroughs of the 18th and 19th centuries—the intimidation, fraud and risk. I for one would be very sad, and I am sure that this view is shared by hon. Members on both sides of the House, if that became the hallmark of the 21st century. That is why it is time for the Government to stop fiddling with our constitution for partisan advantage. It is time to protect people's right to vote in person and in secret. It is time to restore confidence, integrity and accountability to British democracy.

Harriet Harman: I welcome the comments and information, drawn from the hon. Gentleman's own experience, that he has already given us. We are genuinely interested in hearing what the concerns are and hearing evidence. We are taking action and consulting on proposals that we hope will deal with those matters. It is true that not enough evidence is routinely collected about the problems in the system. I therefore accept that point.

Roger Godsiff: Is the Minister aware that, in Birmingham at the last general election, 185 people turned up at the 90 polling stations in the city saying that they wished to vote and were told that they were on the postal vote list? Is she also aware that the chief returning officer of Birmingham city council instructed her staff at the polling stations to keep a list of all those people? I am surprised that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) did not know that, seeing that his administration ran the city council during the elections.

Harriet Harman: My hon. Friend makes an important point and we must consider all those issues. I look forward to hearing speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the House in the debate. As I said, we will found our proposals on evidence, wherever we receive it, and proceed by way of consultation. Our objectives are to ensure that we take action to tackle the scandal of the possibly millions of people who are entitled to be on the electoral register, but are not and so are not able to vote; to ensure that we will have more secure voting; and to ensure that we increase the turnout.

David Davies: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Lady for giving way again, but does she share the concern of many people that, while it has been easy for large sections of the population to get on the register, it has not been easy for members of the armed forces? Given that members of the armed forces are serving around the world, carrying out the instructions and will of her Government, is not it shameful that so many of them were left off the electoral roll and were unable to vote in the last election?

Harriet Harman: I agree with the substance of the hon. Gentleman's point about service personnel, which I will deal with in due course. If I may, I should like to make some progress. I anticipate that my speech will deal with many of the points that Members want to make.
	So our three objectives are getting people who are entitled to vote on to the register, establishing a voting process that is more secure, and increasing turnout. The legitimacy of our system depends on making progress in all those areas. There is a great wealth of election experience in all parts of the House. I am by no means the longest serving Member of this House, but I have been returned in seven elections, and the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), who will respond to this debate, has been a candidate in five general elections and in many local elections. So there is a wealth of experience in this House, but also beyond it. We need to draw on the experience of our colleagues in local government, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the European Parliament and the political parties—not just the organisers, but the vast army of volunteers who do so much to make the electoral system work.
	I believe that we all share a commitment to a system that allows everyone the right to vote, and which is secure against fraud. While there should be no party difference on that point, the constituencies that we represent are very diverse—a fact that affects Members' approach to these issues. For example, more than a third of my constituents were not born in the United Kingdom. My constituency, which has a high population turnover and many people struggling on low incomes, is very different from that of the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire. It also differs from that of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). There, the electoral system must work for a population that, although stable, is very widely scattered. In some constituencies, the issue of student voting is very important; in others, the issue is the ability of servicemen and women to vote. The essential principles of our electoral system must be applied in all constituencies, not just some.
	The different concerns of Members in all parts of the House arise principally from the differences in the constituencies that we represent. We must acknowledge and respect those differences. Those in whose constituencies there is proven fraud should acknowledge that that is not the case everywhere. Those in whose constituencies fraud does not exist should not deny the need for robust anti-fraud systems. Those whose constituencies have no problem with under-registration should not deny that it is a huge problem in others. As I have said, probably more than a million people who are entitled to vote are not registered. The point is that both security and access to voting matter. Measures to tackle both issues must be adopted, and they must be proportionate and sensible.
	We will proceed on the basis of considering the evidence. We will respond to headlines, but only because we recognise that when they overstate the problem of fraud, we need to do what we can to reassure the public and to sustain confidence. We will not be complacent but nor will we panic, and we will proceed by way of consultation. We issued a policy paper last month and we are consulting on it. We are still considering the responses, so I have no further announcements to make today. However, I intend to listen carefully to this debate. I want to hear the speeches not only of Front Benchers, but of all Members in all parts of the House, so I will stay for the whole debate. We have also consulted by way of meetings and discussions with Members from all parties. I want to thank all those Members who have written to me and taken the time to give me their views in meetings. I believe that I am the only person to have invited the new Conservative Members to a meeting who is not also running for the Tory party leadership.
	We will continue to consult. We must have a system that ensures that all have the right to vote, which is not currently the case. As I said, there are probably more than a million who cannot vote because they are not on the register. That not only affects individuals who lose their right to vote, but undermines the basis on which the boundary commission does its work. That is why it is so important.

Alan Beith: I hope that the Minister recognises, as did two Committees in the last Parliament, that if we go for individual registration, for which there is a very powerful case, it will be essential to adopt various forms of data sharing to ensure that people are not left off the register. At least some of those who were left off the register in Northern Ireland were probably not fraudulently on it in the first place.

Geoffrey Robinson: Following what the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) said, is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that, having successfully fought even one more general election—albeit including a by-election—than she did, I and many others have considerable experience in these matters? I have to say that the state of the electoral register for the last general election was the worst that I have known it throughout my entire period in Parliament. We must place a much greater onus of responsibility on electoral registration officers to be proactive—including data sharing, where necessary. They must keep the registers up to date, accurate and correct in every respect, and they must report on the extent to which the registers are correct. Does the Minister have some proposals to deal with that matter? I have written to her about it.

Harriet Harman: I thank my hon. Friend for his letter and say that his point is echoed in the Select Committee report. I have asked officials in my Department and the Electoral Commission to look further into how data cross-checks could both ensure that gaps on the register are filled and be a vehicle for detecting fraud.

Jim Cunningham: When the Minister follows up the matters raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson), will she also look into another problem that many hon. Members, particularly those in Coventry, are aware of? I refer to the reduction in the number of polling stations. Has it been done to make savings or is it geared up to encourage more people to vote? It has led to problems in Coventry, particularly for ethnic minorities. In the last election, many ethnic minority women had to walk very long distances to vote. I hope that the Minister will respond and do something about that.

Harriet Harman: My hon. Friend makes an important point about access to polling stations. There is also the problem of access to the electoral register. The Select Committee report mentioned that the latest estimate of the number of new Commonwealth citizens not registered is 36.6 per cent.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker, we will all have experienced visiting a polling station on election day and being told by a constituent, "I have come down to vote, but they won't let me. Can you please do something about it?" We check the register and say sorry, but the person is not on the register. We are then told, "But the council has just sent me a bill for my council tax. How can I not be on the register?" There is a real prospect for data sharing to provide more complete registers and to check fraud. The exercise that one has to go through to get child benefit or a driving licence is much tougher than anything even the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire is suggesting for tightening up the electoral register.

Andrew Love: My right hon. and learned Friend has spoken eloquently about the democratic deficit caused by the million or so people missing from the register. Before she considers erecting any more hurdles for people wanting to join that register, will she use the evidence that she has quoted to ensure that the measures do not put more people off?

Harriet Harman: My hon. Friend raises an important point. We need to achieve a more secure voting system and get more people on the register. It is not a matter of one or the other: we need to approach both problems on the same basis.
	Once again, the Opposition have renewed their attack on all-postal voting. As the House knows, the Government are consulting on action for greater security for postal votes. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire does not need to urge us to look at that matter, as we have already agreed to do so, but we must do all we can to ensure higher turnouts. So far, all-postal voting has produced higher turnouts.
	In the light of concerns that we all have about falling turnouts, we will not change the provisions of the Representation of the People Act 2000, which allow the Secretary of State to agree to applications for all-postal voting in those areas that want it. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire asked for such applications to be allowed only under secondary legislation. I can tell him that today I have been considering an application from King's Lynn, where a parish council by-election is due to be held.
	In the past, the parish concerned has had some by-elections that involved all-postal voting, and some that did not. No complaints have been made about all-postal voting, which has led to turnouts of 33 per cent. By contrast, by-elections there that have not involved all-postal voting have achieved turnouts of only 11 per cent. Given that the parish is asking to be allowed to hold an all-postal vote, we should not tie up those responsible for holding the election with parliamentary problems. We should be satisfied that there is a consensus among people in that little area in favour of all-postal voting, and that it would be a bit heavy handed of us to deny them the opportunity.

Harriet Harman: Advisers have the responsibility to advise, and we welcome and respect that advice. It is the responsibility of the Government to bring proposals to this House, and it is the responsibility of this House to decide.
	The Tory motion attacks our introduction of proportional voting systems in the devolved Administrations for "undermining democratic accountability". I confess that I am slightly baffled. In his speech, the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire mounted full-blooded onslaughts on both proportional representation and the first-past-the-post system. I am therefore baffled as to what he proposes—

Harriet Harman: As I have said, we are reviewing the data on how the new systems that we have introduced operate in the devolved Assemblies.
	Whenever anyone debates politics and elections in this country, they talk about trust—trust in politicians, trust in the system of government and trust in the voting system. No single policy or Minister can transform the self-evident problems that all of us of whatever party face in that regard, but we need to ensure that the system of voting—from the compilation of the electoral register and the distribution of postal votes to the counting and declaration of results—enjoys the fullest possible respect and trust in the nation.
	The Government are considering a range of measures—not just in my Department, but across government—to ensure that citizens are more engaged in our political processes and the decisions that affect their lives. Britain rightly takes pride in our democratic traditions based on fairness, the secret ballot and universal suffrage. This Labour Government take an equal pride in our longstanding dedication to democracy and will do everything to protect those fundamental principles.

David Heath: I welcome, first, the debate and, secondly, the contribution made by the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs. I have said before, but I will say it again, that it is high time, first, that we had a Minister of her seniority in that Department in the House and, secondly, that the Department of Constitutional Affairs had repatriated to itself responsibility for these matters, rather than their being spread across other Departments. Both those things are welcome, as was the tenor of the right hon. and learned Lady's speech.
	I was not quite so happy with tenor of the response given by the Prime Minister during Prime Minister's questions earlier today, when in an overdose of either bombast or complacency—it was hard to tell—he appeared to suggest that the governance of Britain was a low priority for his Government. The mechanisms of the governance of Britain are absolutely integral to everything else that we do in the House and everything that the Government do.
	We should be extremely concerned about the consequences of the last election, which have provoked comments such as, from a highly regarded national broadsheet paper, that it was a "subversion of democracy"; from the Electoral Reform Society, that it was "the worst election ever"; and that
	"In some parts of the country there is a real feeling of alienation, of reluctance to participate in our democracy",
	which came from the Leader of the House of Commons, the right hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon). So there is a real issue to be faced.

David Heath: I will give way in a moment; just let me get my introduction over and done with, and then I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman.
	There is an unfortunate degree of complacency. The assumption is that, somehow, because this country, happily, was the birthplace of modern democracy, our systems are therefore necessarily robust and right. Those of us who have represented Parliament in monitoring elections abroad—the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) made this point in his contribution—know that what we look for in an adequate electoral system are things such as a registration system that neither under-registers people who are entitled to vote nor over-registers those who are not entitled to do so and a robust and replicable identification system for voters. We look for the opportunities for fraud that the system offers. We look for abuses of the rules by political parties and others. We consider whether there is an independent electoral commission to which that country's Government take proper notice and whether the voting system properly reflects the views of the electorate. Judged on those criteria, it is hard to see how this country could pass such a test at present.

Kevan Jones: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that some of the sensationalist headlines that he has just read out do not mirror the facts? For example, the Electoral Commission's report on postal voting found little wrong with the system in terms of fraud, except obviously in Birmingham. We should not get carried away by the headlines; we should look at the facts.

David Heath: There has been a longstanding argument about whether we should have compulsory voting. I am not persuaded, and although I agree that it increases turnout because people are fined if they do not vote, it does nothing to maintain the integrity of the system unless other factors are in place.
	Notwithstanding the contribution of the right hon. and learned Lady and the fact that she clearly intends to introduce legislation, which I hope we shall all be able to welcome, I have one major criticism of the Government's position: they did not do much for public confidence in the system, or indeed the integrity of the system, by their conduct during the passage of the European Parliamentary and Local Election (Pilots) Act 2004, on which I represented my party. The Government's attitude was characterised by the fact that they ignored the recommendations of the Electoral Commission and the clear advice of parties in this and the other place. The Government went ahead with what they had intended to do in the first place, which left them open to the charge that they had acted for partisan purposes rather than having the integrity of the system as their main objective.

Stephen McCabe: May I return to the list of factors that the hon. Gentleman suggested that we should look for if we were observing elections in another country? I am happy to say that I agree with all of them, but I noticed that he did not include intimidation, which we should almost certainly be looking at in those circumstances. Does he accept that it is important, and indeed beholden on all of us in this place, to make sure that when we are describing fraud or malpractice we do not exaggerate it? We should not distort the evidence or use newspaper headlines for political advantage. If we do so, we intimidate elderly people from taking up their legal democratic right to a postal vote, as some people fear happened during the recent election. It certainly happened in Birmingham, due to the disproportionate attention to what happened in two local government wards.

David Heath: The hon. Gentleman should take care about using the word "disproportionate" to describe convictions that were properly made in Birmingham and the facts revealed in a court. It is proper that such matters should be correctly reported and described. In other senses however, I agree with him. Intimidation is a factor that we need to deal with and later in my remarks I shall set out what all political parties should be doing about it.

John Hemming: Will my hon. Friend accept that Birmingham is perhaps unique in its commitment to deal with electoral fraud, rather than unique as a place where electoral fraud occurs? Does he agree that there is evidence that electoral reform increases turnout by 20 per cent. in G8 countries and on average by 10 per cent. in other countries? If the Government were really committed to increasing turnout, they would introduce electoral reform.

David Heath: I agree with my hon. Friend and shall return to that point in a moment. Three things are essential to voters when they cast their ballots in elections. First, they must know that their votes are counted properly. Secondly, they must know that their votes will count, which relates to the point made by my hon. Friend. Thirdly, they must know that the person whom they elect counts and that a proper representative democracy is able to do its job in this place, although the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire perhaps elided that point.

David Heath: I agree with the hon. Gentleman up to a point, although we live in the real world, so we would not be able to devise a system that would be wholly impossible to defraud. However, we must make it as difficult as possible to commit fraud, which is why the Electoral Commission's recommendations on individual voter identification and strictures on all-postal voting are extremely sensible. I regret those strictures because we have had a successful all-postal vote in my constituency, but clearly the system has not worked satisfactorily in all parts of the country. We should bring in additional anti-fraud measures. We all face the problem that if the system is open to malpractice, sure as eggs is eggs, someone will attempt to abuse it.
	We currently do not know the extent of electoral fraud because up until now, we have taken the fairly pollyannaish view that this is Britain and such things do not happen here. There is now evidence that such things do happen here, although we do not know to what extent because we do not have the mechanisms or systems of audit to find out. I hope the thrust of the legislation that the Minister of State will bring forward will be to put appropriate systems in place and that all parties will be able to support her proposals. However, when that happens, all political parties will have the further requirement to take the matter seriously. I say all political parties because there is not one single political party that is not open to such abuse. Indeed, I suspect that there is not one party in which there has not been an incident of a person abusing the system.
	Part of a discussion that I had with the Minister of State the other day was the point that parties should have zero tolerance of such abuse. If people bend the rules, we need to make it clear that they no longer represent our party, the Conservative party, the Labour party, or any other party for which the democratic process is important. I am not talking about only the postal vote rigging that we have heard about because we as politicians know that all sorts of abuses are possible. Incidents of votes being farmed in old people's homes have been reported over the years and it is time that that stopped. If anyone knows that it is happening, it is time for them to report it to the appropriate officers and for appropriate action to be taken in the relevant political party. People might receive an extra polling card and have the simple temptation to run down the street with it to get an extra vote, but it is not good enough to say that on the fringes that will not make a difference to the result because it will—every single vote counts, so every single vote must be a properly registered vote.
	We need to examine some of the rules—this is the last point that I shall make about constituency elections—that are still very lax. It might be said that my party would say that. We have funding limits for expenditure in elections in constituencies. We all laboriously complete forms after an election declaring what we have spent. We have to register every penny. We do that while other national parties put huge expenditure into a limited number of marginal constituencies across the country. That expenditure is vastly out of proportion to anything that is spent locally. How is that anything other than an abuse of the system and of the rules that we have in place?

Richard Younger-Ross: Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be wrong for a party, for instance, to put out four letters by its national leader targeted to more than 50 per cent. of the voters, to put about a leaflet hand delivered and paid-for-delivery throughout the campaign and to put in two advertisements in local newspapers all purporting to be part of the national campaign, which have not had to be accounted for as part of local expenditure? This is a trend. I am not naming only one party. It is a trend of all parties. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a distortion of the process?

David Heath: I think that it is a distortion. I think that the three parties that are represented in the Chamber at present are guilty of it to differing degrees because we have different assets to our names. Nevertheless, we are guilty of it and it is time that it stopped. It is time also that the rules reflected that.
	I shall move on quickly because I know that many Members wish to speak. I am aware that I have taken many interventions.
	There is the issue about making votes count. Perhaps I might be expected to say this, but I am provoked to say it by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) putting into his motion, and therefore making it one that I am incapable of supporting, adverse comments on proportional representation. We have just had a general election where the turnout was 61 per cent. The Labour party, which formed a Government, achieved a 67-seat majority on 36 per cent. of the popular vote, representing just 22 per cent. of the electorate. That is the lowest figure since the Great Reform Act of 1832. That is a preposterous result for anyone who considers it sensibly.
	The hon. Gentleman was complaining about the fact that the result did not reflect the fact that the Conservatives had a majority of the votes in England in that context. He is right to complain, but he cannot see the elephant invading his bedroom, which is that the answer is to have a system that properly reflects the weight of votes cast rather than the first-past-the-post system. There was a majority of the popular vote for the Conservatives in England and the Conservatives have no representations in any of our great metropolises outside London.
	Let us consider the rural shires. In Cumbria, the Conservatives were the most popular party with 38.2 per cent. of the vote, yet they had only one seat to show for that at the end. There were four seats for the Labour party and one seat—it was an excellent win—which was gained by my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). That is hardly a reflection of the Conservative vote in Cumbria.
	In Cornwall 82,543 people voted Conservative. That was 31.8 per cent. of the electorate. The Liberal Democrats took five seats out of five and the Conservatives had no representation in Cornwall. In Cambridgeshire, 74,521 people voted for Labour. That was 24.7 per cent. of the electorate. There is no Labour representation in Cambridgeshire. In Surrey, 148,620 people voted Liberal Democrat. That was 28.4 per cent. of the electorate. We have not one seat in Surrey. There are 11 Conservatives out of 11. That cannot be defended in any circumstances as a fair outcome.

Oliver Heald: Would the hon. Gentleman accept that the bias in the system at present is mostly accounted for by variations in size between constituencies throughout the United Kingdom? If we had an equal electoral quota that was properly implemented throughout the country so that constituencies were the same size we would have a much more proportional system and one that did not have the bias within it?

David Heath: That is arithmetical nonsense. The hon. Gentleman is saying that because the average Conservative electorate consists of 73,004 people his party is badly treated. My electorate consists of 77,000 people, and I do not feel badly treated. Making the highland seats any bigger would make them virtually the same size as a small country, and that is not a sensible form of representation.
	Equalisation raises a number of issues, including the time at which we take the figures, as has been said. I hesitate to mention another reason for the inequalities because I am worried about the consequences, but in the shire authorities we rely on the county boundaries to be coterminous with the sum total of the constituency. We have large constituencies in Somerset simply because in the present administrative county we do not yet merit the sixth constituency that we would otherwise deserve.

David Heath: I have tempted the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger) by mentioning Somerset, but if he wishes to intervene he will take more time from colleagues.

David Heath: There is an absurdly small variation to the boundary between the Somerset and Frome and Yeovil seats. It has not resulted in a change in the net population or, as far as I can see, political propensity, so it is utterly pointless.
	I appreciate the demands on our time, so I shall conclude with the need for accountability. If we want people to be interested in elections they must believe that they are electing someone who will do a satisfactory job for them, and will have the opportunity to represent them properly and scrutinise the Government. The House is failing in that duty, and both it and the House of Lords need to be reformed. We must look at the two issues in the round, and get on with the reform programme. I welcome the review of electoral systems by the Department for Constitutional Affairs, although I have doubts and regrets about the Cabinet Sub-Committee and its chairman, as I fear that they may obstruct sensible arrangements. I look forward eagerly, however, to the electoral administration Bill.
	I do not support the Conservative motion, because of the rush of blood to the head that the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire experienced halfway through his speech, when he became peevish about proportional representation. I do not support the Government amendment, which is the most complacent amendment I have ever seen and appears to suggest that everything is rosy when clearly it is not. We shall take great pleasure in voting against both.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I remind all right hon. and hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has imposed an eight-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.

Roger Godsiff: There is much that I would like to say, but time is limited for all of us, so I ask the House to forgive me if I pass over some matters.
	In the debate on 22 June last year, I explained to the House how the postal vote system had been abused in Birmingham and turned into political currency. I do not wish to revisit the issue, not least because matters are sub judice, but I should like to highlight the action taken by the returning officer in Birmingham to try to prevent the situation from arising at the general election. The returning officer wrote to everyone who was on the postal vote list, which resulted in a great number of people being removed from it. Indeed, in one ward where there was controversy the number went down from 8,600 people to 3,000. Hon. Members will agree that that is a huge drop. The returning officer worked with the West Midlands police to investigate all multiple applications, and the police visited houses where more than five people had applied for postal votes. Together with the work to encourage all political parties to sign up to a code of conduct, that ensured that the contests that took place in Birmingham during the general election were not subject to the problems that occurred in local elections.
	However, there are three issues that I shall touch on briefly. First, how do we prevent the electoral process from being corrupted by fraudulent use of postal votes? I am not in favour of all-postal voting, particularly when that system is imposed on people against their will. I agree with the Opposition spokesperson who referred to the dangers of gimmicky e-voting. It is fraught with dangers and if it is brought in, it will cause even more problems than have occurred with postal voting. But there is no doubt that many people like the opportunity to vote by post, so we must devise a system that is as foolproof as possible.
	To go on the electoral register, a person should have to sign. Whether they sign individually or sign a form that comes to the house, there must be a signature. If that person applies for a postal vote, the signature on the application must be checked against the signature provided to go on the register. As a final safeguard, when the person fills in the postal vote and sends it back with the declaration of secrecy, that signature must also be checked. Those are positive steps that can be taken and would make a real impact. I know that it would cost money and there would be arguments against such a system, but what is the price of democracy? I strongly urge my right hon. and learned Friend to consider that seriously as part of legislation.
	Secondly, we should revisit the argument about obligatory voting. Some people call it compulsory voting, but it is not. It just obliges somebody as a citizen in a democratic society to go to a polling station or to get a postal vote. What they do with the ballot paper afterwards is entirely a matter for them. All right hon. and hon. Members will have gone through the salutary experience on election night of watching the disputed votes and seeing what some of our electors think of us. I have no problem with that. People are exercising their democratic right. I would not object if there was a place on the ballot paper where a voter could write "None of the above" or write in the name of a candidate for whom they did want to vote.
	We are allowing a cop-out from the democratic system. If we want higher turnout, we should move towards the Australian system of obligatory voting. It is far better than going in for various gimmicky ways of trying to increase the turnout which are fraught with dangers, as has been found with postal votes.
	The final point concerns a problem that occurs in an area such as mine, which I hope my right hon. and learned Friend will take on board in legislation. What happens on election day in a constituency such as mine is not how elections used to be fought. Traditionally, at the polling station there would be a representative of each of the parties, the number taker, and there would be a great deal of conviviality and sharing of information.
	That does not exist in areas such as mine. On election day groups of people congregate at the entrance to polling stations. They hand out leaflets and talk to people, particularly in areas where English is not the first language and where the number on the ballot paper is even more important than the name. They give out a great deal of misinformation. During the day the numbers at each polling station build up so that by early evening, as happened in my constituency at the recent election, there are 50 or 60 people at the gates.
	The police are there and struggle to prevent violence breaking out. In the background there is the cacophony of cars parked outside the polling station with recorded messages from the candidates on a repetitive reel, so that goes on throughout the day. All the traditional conventions that most of us may remember, whereby a loudspeaker was not allowed anywhere near a polling station and there was no campaigning on polling day, have gone by the board. Somebody who wants to vote from the early evening onwards has to go through a cacophony of sound, intimidation, harassment and misinformation, and that is only to get into the polling station. It is no good turning round and saying, "Well, the police have powers to deal with that." As we have learned in the west midlands, the police do not have such powers. New legislation is needed to prevent campaigning within a certain area around a polling station, because the police do not have a hope at the moment. I have shared my views with hon. Members, but I am mindful of the fact that time is limited.
	I welcome the Government's intention to introduce legislation. I also welcome the fact that both the Minister of State and the Under-Secretary have fought many elections and are therefore experienced. I am sure that their boss in the Department also has long experience of fighting elections, and I hope that they share their experiences with him in drawing up the legislation.
	I urge Ministers to take on board my remarks this evening, which are a genuine attempt to address the issues. When I referred to what happens on polling day, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Steve McCabe) and others nodded vigorously, and if the issue is not addressed, the situation will get worse.

Peter Bottomley: Although I have probably experienced more elections than most hon. Members, my experience is not as extensive as that of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff).
	The Electoral Commission should fund closed circuit television supervision of what goes on outside polling stations, which would allow the police and others to take action after an election, because the certainty of action will stop people from engaging in an activity that is undesirable and should be unlawful. Voting without intimidation matters in a family, outside a polling station and inside a polling station.
	In approximately 1997, I first raised the question of allowing outside observers into polling stations. If I go as an observer to El Salvador, South Africa or anywhere else, I expect to go into a polling station. I expect authorised observers following our elections to be able to do the same thing here, and I hope that there will not be another national election in which that cannot happen.
	The Electoral Commission should be given funds to allow it rather than local authorities to provide money to electoral returning officers. I have not seen complaints from electoral returning officers about the allocation of funds within local authorities, but that temptation should be avoided.
	I demand that the Government make sure that every service voter is registered by the time of the next national election, which is a point that applies to both local elections and general elections. It is scandalous that the Government made changes that made it less likely that service voters would be on the electoral register, and all their words before the last election were inadequate. We should not spend too long going over the past, but Ministers—not only Defence Ministers, but Ministers with responsibility for electoral registration and, preferably, the Prime Minister, too—must make sure that a service voter's ability to vote is maintained by their service unit and the Government.
	A similar point applies to overseas voters in general. When I visited Mallorca, I met potential voters, and the British Government expend very little effort on people who are eligible to vote from overseas countries. The high commission or embassy website might refer to registration, but nothing is released in the British community stating, "This is the easy way to register to vote—and you should do so." I want to see all-party work on that point, and perhaps the opportunity to send out members on balanced delegations should be extended to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association to try to encourage that process. If people like such trips, why not take them for a good cause that helps democracy?
	If we were to introduce voting at 16, one advantage would be that people could automatically move from the child benefit register to the voting register. As a growing number of families receives child benefit until children are 18, the transfer should become automatic. The measure should not entail a breach of data confidentiality, so let us take that simple, practical step.
	Let us try to ensure that we get the co-operation of mobile phone services, because most people coming up to the age of 18 and eligible to be registered to vote should be able to send a public service message to do so, if that is allowed by this House, as that goes beyond ordinary data protection issues. A whole series of those simple things could happen, in addition of course to the council tax payer being automatically expected to be on the electoral register.
	I turn to individual registration, which was one of the issues discussed by the Electoral Commission and by the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs combined with the Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister just before the election. Although there are arguments for individual registration, they are not so overwhelming that an electoral register should require an individual signature. Students in halls of residence would not register in great numbers if that were the requirement. It is preferable that one person in a household should be able to nominate people on the register. Perhaps then, if the electoral registration system requires something to go out to individual potentially registered voters, they can sign up for a postal vote or any other method of voting, and that can be checked. The initial movement towards the register should come from the householder or pseudo-householder, whether they be the warden of a students' hall of residence, a landlord, the manager of a residential home for the elderly, or someone like me with a household that is occasionally full of children eligible to vote.
	A whole series of other issues matter, but given that attendance has been quite good and that colleagues on both sides of the House still want to speak, all I want to say is: "Don't let this discussion be totally distorted by arguments for proportional representation, because that has been shown to be a last-past-the-post system on too many occasions." If we want to start talking about electoral systems, let us have a proper debate on getting rid of the worst scandal in our system at the moment—the closed list system for the European Assembly elections. If the electorate cannot pick out someone they particularly want and get them elected or pick out someone they particularly do not want and get them disappointed, we shall have a system that is not democracy.

Clive Betts: I will not take interventions because other hon. Members want to speak.
	Eventually, this country will have the most comprehensive database of individuals and where they live, drawn up for the national identity card scheme. Why do not we have a direct read-across? If people want a secure, comprehensive system with integrity, there we have it. We would save resources at local authority level. There would be no need for all the canvassing, verification and checking that currently occurs. Local authorities could pay the national register for the information. That would contribute towards the register's cost. It would save central Government and local authorities money and be a comprehensive system with integrity and security. We should consider it seriously. It would be a dramatic step forward, which will give us a register that is 99 per cent. accurate. If that is what everyone wants as a basis for our electoral system, the Government should consider it seriously.

Eric Pickles: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts). I commiserate with him on the state of his voice and hope that he finds a lozenge soon. I agree about the importance of the electoral registration system being open and welcoming. It also needs to be transparent and, above all, to inspire confidence.
	Much to my surprise, it is nearly 40 years since I joined a political party. I recall that, in the late 1960s, no one really questioned the honesty of the British electoral system. It was taken for granted that it was run correctly, but that is no longer the case. People doubt the integrity of the ballot box. This was my fourth general election in Brentwood and Ongar—this seems to be confession time, with me telling the House how many times I have fought an election—and I think that I also fought four elections as a district councillor. However, this is the first time that I can remember people coming up to me to express their worries about the safety of their postal vote because of what had appeared in the newspapers.
	The expression of such worries was not confined to those in political parties. The electoral registration officer for Brentwood borough council, Mr. Jim Stevens—a man of considerable experience in the conduct of elections, both in this country and overseas—reported to me an unprecedented number of telephone calls from people seeking reassurance that their postal vote would be safe. Even in a quiet place such as Brentwood, we have one election fraud case pending.
	In my old area of Bradford, the returning officer, Mr. Philip Robinson, has called for
	"urgent reviews of electoral registration and postal voting on demand . . . in advance of the next elections in 2006."
	I have known Philip for the best part of 25 years, and I worked closely with him for 12 years. He is not a man who moves with the whim of fashion. He is not an excitable man; he is a dedicated, loyal public servant who would not have called for such reviews unless he was shocked enough to feel that some probity should be brought back into the electoral system. Probity is important. Of course, there will be unscrupulous people who try to cut corners, but we must build into the system a degree of probity. It is with some regret that I say that the Government have, unintentionally, built probity out of the system, rather than building it in.
	The Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) does us a great courtesy by remaining in the Chamber for the whole of our debate. She asked for suggestions on how to improve the situation and I shall give her three. I could give more, but because of the time limit, I shall let these three speak for all of them.
	The document issued by the Department for Constitutional Affairs suggests that allowing people to register to vote after an election has been called, up to 11 days before the poll. Under the current law, there is a five-day period of objection. That would mean that there would be just six days before the election to check people entering the register at that point. The chances of fraud or multi-registration would be much greater. If the present March deadline allows vote factories to operate, how much greater would that problem be with an 11-day deadline? Such a deadline would provide little or no chance to check that the voter had been removed from their previous address, and in most cases, such voters would have the opportunity to vote in another electoral district.
	It has also been proposed to replace the serial numbers on ballot papers with barcodes. That might sound sensible because it would increase transparency, but it is probably the best example of the Government's determination to increase postal voting at the expense of the polling station and ignores the reality on the ground. The Government's argument that the measure would increase safety and improve anonymity is wrong-headed, because, at present, only a court can open ballot papers and check them against the numbers provided. The use of numbers is of immense importance because they can be used by the polling clerk and the returning officer to reconcile information, first to ensure that the right number of ballot papers have been issued in the right order and, secondly, to ensure that the same number of ballot papers that leave a polling station arrive at the other end. If barcodes replaced the numbering system, we would not know whether any ballot papers had gone missing on the route between polling station and counting station. Something that would be handy for the purposes of postal votes would undermine the whole process of voting in person.
	The hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff) made a point about signatures. The document suggests that people should be able to apply for postal votes at the same time as applying for registration. Many authorities have invested in software that identifies signatures. If a person makes both applications at the same time, it will be impossible to check for fraud. That is wholly wrong. I agree with him that signatures should be integral: when people go into the polling station, they should sign the register.
	I think that it would be possible to introduce several reforms to encourage turnout without compromising the integrity of the ballot paper. The Government suggest that applications for postal votes should be made 11 days before the polling date rather than six, which would allow for fraud checks to be made. The drawback is that many people would not be able to vote, and many would object at the polling station. If a proxy vote could be issued six days, or three days, in advance—that, after all, relies on the issuing of a single paper—the Government's sensible suggestion might be workable, and people would still be able to vote.
	Those who want to increase voter participation and want more people to go to the polling station should think about the powers of local government. If all decisions are made in a remote region, people will not see the point of going out to vote. If power is given to local authorities, people will vote.

Alan Whitehead: This has turned out to be a thoughtful debate, but unfortunately the motion does not seem to be as thoughtful as the speeches made by Members in all parts of the House. It appears to concentrate on just one aspect of what I consider to be the triple responsibility that we all have for the legitimacy of our system. Our three responsibilities are to ensure that the franchise is accessible and that people have access to it, to ensure that people can use the franchise and vote, and to ensure that when people have voted they believe they have voted fairly, safely and securely and that the result is therefore legitimate. Those three legs supporting the system's legitimacy are integral to its operation. If we pull them apart or concentrate on just one, the system itself will not have the integrity that we would wish it to have.
	Our electoral process has always been open to determined fraud and abuse. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) observed, it is miraculous that, over the years, it has not been systematically abused as it might have been through personation, false registration, ballot purchase and so forth. It is certainly true that the system can be attacked. It is also true that it is failing almost completely in some parts of the country. I refer to the first leg of the system's legitimacy—the question of who registers to vote.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) mentioned the difficulty of registering, or regaining registration, in different parts of Sheffield. The figures show startling differences in different seats. They range from registration levels of under 70 per cent. of the census figure in some parts of the country to 105 per cent. of the census figure in other parts. It will not be difficult for hon. Members to guess which parts of the country represent which end of the scale. In inner-city areas, in large conurbations and, interestingly, in seaside towns, registration is very bad. Conversely, in some rural and semi-rural areas, particularly in parts of my county of Hampshire, not only is registration up with the census but it continues to build on the census—every person who could conceivably be registered every year in terms of the census extrapolation becomes registered.
	If we extrapolated that and compared the population of constituencies with the size of the population on the register, we would find that the constituencies were rather similar in size, but that our system is gradually distorting through boundary revisions to build under-registration into our system. That does not seem to represent well the leg of legitimacy that I emphasised earlier.
	The decline in trust in our society may have begun to lead, as the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) mentioned, to the questioning of the veracity of the electoral system. We always have accepted essentially that people are who they say they are when they register, that they are who they say they are when they go to vote and that they put in the ballot box the ballot that they have been given by the returning officer between the table and the box in which the ballot is placed.
	There have at all stages been electoral petitions and various actions to challenge each of those processes. There have not been fundamental changes in the way in which we have conducted those various processes, even though those challenges have been made, there have been election petitions and the charges have been upheld on occasion.
	It is interesting that every change in how our electoral system works has been accompanied by substantial charges that the change was essentially fraudulent, that everything would go to pot and that it would not work. When the Ballot Act 1872 came in, there were widespread charges concerning the so-called Tasmanian dodge. People said that there would be electoral officers standing outside the polling booth giving the first voter a blank piece of paper, that they would go in, put the blank piece of paper in, take the vote out, take the money for the vote, give it to a second person who was corrupted and that would continue during the day. No evidence was ever found that the Tasmanian dodge ever happened but the system of watermarking perforation on ballot papers was introduced as a result of fears of the Tasmanian dodge.
	Notwithstanding the seriousness of the cases that have come to light about elements of fraud with the ballot system and postal ballot system, the postal ballot is important in terms of how people vote as their lives change and in increasing participation in elections, one of the legs of legitimacy that I mentioned. The idea that a system, if organised well, can be completely secure is something that perhaps we will come to see as similar to the Tasmanian dodge.
	It is essential that we ensure that we have integrity in our electoral system and I commend the Green Paper for discussion. I hope that it will come substantially into legislation to ensure that that integrity is enhanced, but we have to be clear in our minds that, if we tilt in one direction so much in making sure that there are no possible ways in which fraud could ever conceivably enter into our electoral system, we will do so at the expense of most people's access to the ballot in the first place. That will be the end of legitimacy in a different direction.
	The Conservative candidate in Southampton was seen giving money to electors both in the city centre and later on at a public meeting on the edge of the city. Obviously, that was deplorable but fortunately the electors of Southampton have not let the results of the 1895 election in Southampton, which resulted in the arrest of the Conservative candidate and his disbarment on the election petition, undermine the integrity of the system. We should be vigilant against fraud in the electoral system, but we must also ensure that that system is open and democratic and capable of being exercised by those who vote in Britain.

John Hemming: Oddly enough, I had intended to raise the issue of the secret ballot myself. I represent a local government ward as well as a parliamentary constituency, and in that regard I share part of the Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath constituency. It is true that there is substantial intimidation in the streets from time to time. The Labour party leaflet on getting out the postal vote describes everybody's house as a polling station. The big question is, where is the presiding officer?

Jonathan Djanogly: I am afraid that time does not allow that.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley) pointed out in a thoughtful speech, even banana republics allow outside observers. The integrity of our electoral system is not just in question, but in danger.
	We have heard various examples this afternoon of the malaise that has hit our electoral system. We have heard about fraud, poor registration procedures, administrative incompetence, wildly unequal constituency sizes and over-representation in urban areas. Clearly, something must be done to remedy the situation. Indeed, the Electoral Commission has warned of the need for reform since 2002, but the Government did not listen. If they had, we might have avoided some of the many instances of fraud that have happened across the country.

Jonathan Djanogly: In the infamous case of the Birmingham councillors in 2004, the judge accused the Government of being not only complacent, but "in denial".
	There have nevertheless been some developments. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff) mentioned the priority given to counter-fraud in Birmingham during the election, which is welcome. Other Members have spoken about other developments and the Minister noted that the Government have woken up to the reality and are proposing some long-overdue reforms to our system. She supported the proposals in the Government's policy paper of May 2005, most of which were recommended by the Electoral Commission and should have been implemented long ago. Today, however, the Minister spoke as if many of these were new issues about which action suddenly needs to be taken. Although the Conservative Opposition welcome the proposals, we maintain that it is too little, too late. Even if the proposals go ahead—we hope that they do—several deficiencies in the electoral system will remain.

Jonathan Djanogly: I would like to focus on two key issues: postal voting and electoral quotas.
	The number of reported instances of suspected fraud relating to postal votes is alarming. For example, following the recent general election, the police have reportedly investigated dozens of claims of vote tampering. That poses the question of how much electoral fraud over postal votes has taken place without being reported. After hearing evidence of the councillors' fraud in Birmingham, the judge said:
	"Short of writing 'Steal Me' on the envelopes, it is hard to see what more could be done to ensure their coming into the wrong hands".

Bridget Prentice: I rise with some trepidation to speak in the debate, because I have not made a speech in the House for two years, unless hon. Members count saying, "I beg to move, That this House do now adjourn", as amounting to a speech.
	This has been a very interesting debate on a subject that is close to the hearts of all hon. Members. My right hon. and learned Friend expressed in her opening remarks a wish to use the expertise of all hon. Members to increase voter participation and engagement in the electoral process, and I want to echo that this evening. Clearly, during the debate, there has been cross-party consensus on some of the fundamental issues. Few Members have argued against a system whereby it is easy and straightforward for people to register and vote or against one that is safe and secure.
	I agree with the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) that we need a robust system, and I hope that he would agree with us that part of the fundamental problem with bias is the under-representation in some areas of the country, and that we must work hard to ensure that the register is improved. That is the essence of our democratic society.
	We have heard a number of useful contributions from hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff) made a number of important points and, indeed, has already responded to the consultation exercise. He made a particularly good point about the practical work that is already being undertaken in his constituency under the present system. That is something on which we want to build. He also made a powerful case about extending the rights of arrest outside polling stations, and I can assure him that we are genuinely consulting on that.
	The hon. Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley) made a very considered speech, with a number of positive points, and I want to tell him, too, that we are consulting on whether to allow observers into polling stations and that we completely take his point about service personnel. The idea that those people from our country who are doing the ultimate duty as citizens, as members of our forces, should in some way be denied the fundamental right of citizenship is not one that any hon. Member could support. We will consider very carefully building on the issues that we included in the Representation of the People Act 2000, to increase the opportunities for service personnel, and we will work with our colleagues in the Ministry of Defence on that issue.
	Again, we agree very much with my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) in deploring the few cases of fraud. It is a pity that the Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen spent so much time on that issue, rather than on discussing under-representation and the lack of representation in some areas of the country.

Oliver Heald: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is not it out of order to make an insulting remark about a judge?

Bridget Prentice: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon) that much has been said about what happened in Birmingham and he is right to point out that those claims were exaggerated. We need to look at the facts.
	I remind the House that the recent general election, like the last one, the one before that and many before that, was run successfully, safely and securely. That is the fact.

Bridget Prentice: I am sorry, I do not have time to give way. I really must press on.
	Of course, we need to boost public confidence in the system. Everyone in the House condemns any attempt to undermine it. In the House, there are people with experience of between 1,500 and 2,000 elections, whether local or generalwho better equipped to comment on the electoral process?
	The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) seemed to be saying that the whole electoral system was riddled with fraud. Is he saying that that is happening everywhere in the country except Huntingdon? We should not exaggerate.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) made several useful points about making the franchise accessible, easy to use and secure. He outlined the disparities in registration and drew parallels with the census. He made an important point about the balance between security and accessibility and said that if we push the balance too far in one direction, we may undermine the system.
	Points were made about postal voting, which has received cross-party support. Every party believes that the use of the postal vote is an improvement to the system. Indeed, the public like postal voting; it offers them a choice and all the evidence shows that people who request a postal vote are more likely to exercise it. None of us could disagree with that.
	As my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister said at the start of the debate, we had hoped to find cross-party consensus on many of the issues under discussion today. However, after listening to what both Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen said about proportional representation, I fear that we will find it difficult to bridge that particular gap.
	We have responded to the Electoral Commission's reports by accepting many of its recommendations on improving access and participation. We have said that we will legislate when parliamentary time allows. That is why my right hon. and learned Friend has undertaken such an important consultation to form part of our thinking before we bring a Bill before the House. She has already met many hon. Members, both old and new, from across the House and several have already commented on the policy paper.
	The debate had all the promise of an opportunity for the people probably most expert in the conduct of elections to come together to discuss in a serious and considered manner how best to engage more people in the election process. It was an opportunity to have an informed discussion about how we engage citizens in our democracy. I was sorry that the Opposition Front Bench did not engage in that discussion

Question accordingly negatived.
	Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments): 
	The House divided: Ayes 300, Noes 226.

John Stanley: I do not have any interest to declare, but I should like to state that I am chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Nepal.
	I am very glad to have the opportunity to initiate this brief but necessary debate on Nepal. It is one of the extraordinary paradoxes of the world since 9/11 that while huge attention has justifiably been focused on the war against terrorism, first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, and then in relation to al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda-type elements all round the world, precious little attention has been paid to the country that is most in the grip of terrorism of any country on this globethe Kingdom of Nepal.
	Nepal is a country that has suffered tragically and most severely in the past nine years since the Maoist terrorism began. Indeed, the contrast between the situation nine years ago and that of today is very striking.
	Nine years ago in 1996, I had the great honour of leading the last British Inter-Parliamentary Union outward delegation to Nepal. In 1996, one could travel anywhere at any time in Nepal. There was no Maoist terrorism, there was a free media and free political expression and an emerging but strong and genuine multi-party democracy, not least because of the far-sightedness of the late King Birendra in ending the Panchayat system in 1990. Prior to our visit, two general elections had been successfully held in Nepal, under universal suffrage and with international observer teams, including Members of the House of Commons, in place on both occasions.
	The close relationship between our Parliament and the Parliament in Nepal was demonstrated symbolically and in reality when, in 1992, our Parliament gifted the Speakers' Chairs for the two Houses of Parliament in Nepal. We saw those Chairs, carved in magnificent British oak, in situ in the National Assembly and the House of Representatives.
	Today, Nepal is racked with terrorism. It is stalked by brutality, fear, appalling human rights violations, committed by the Maoists and also by Government forces. There is no Parliament in operation or in prospect, at least for the next few years. In the past nine years, the country has sunk from what was, in 1996, a democratic triumph to effective parliamentary oblivion.
	I want to raise seven issues with the Minister. First, I want to ask about the role of the British Government's special representative to Nepal. I welcomed the appointment of Sir Jeffrey James as the special representative. The parliamentary group had beneficial contact with him throughout the time that he held the post. The need for a special representative is even greater now than when Sir Jeffrey James was appointed, especially with the assumption of autocratic power by King Gyanendra. Yet Sir Jeffrey James has retired and not been replaced. I hope that the Minister can tell the House why a successor has not been appointed and who is taking on the responsibilities that were previously discharged by Sir Jeffrey James. I hope that the Minister can assure us that the fact that there has been no successor to Sir Jeffrey James in no way suggests a diminution in the priority that the British Government give Nepal.
	Secondly, I want to ask about the British Government's policy on the provision of military equipment to Nepal. I acknowledge that the Government are in some difficulty. They obviously wish to make it clear to King Gyanendra that they, along with other Governments around the world, strongly disapprove of the King's assumption of autocratic powers. However, I am sure that the British Government are also conscious of the seriousness of Maoist terrorism and the need to try to support the royal Nepalese army with equipment that will save lives, not least those of innocent civilians.
	It is evident that the Government's policy has performed something of a switchback. Initially, there was the ill-fated gift of two helicopters, which rapidly became grounded. That was followed by a further gift of short take-off and landing aircraft. Then, in January this year, the Government announced a package of what was described as non-lethal military equipment. Within a matter of two or three weeks, however, that announcement had to be superseded when the King took power at the beginning of February and the Government announced that the package had had to be suspended.
	Only recently have we seen the release of one element of that package: the bomb detection and disposal equipment. I believe that the Government made the right decision in that regard, because only one function can be performed by such equipment, and that is to save lives, which is obviously the key objective. Will the Minister clarify what is now the British Government's policy? Are they going to release more items from the package that was announced in January, and are they now following a policy of releasing at least some types of equipment to help to prevent the worst eventuality of all, a complete Maoist takeover of the remainder of the country?
	Thirdly, I want to raise the issue of the position of the Gurkha connection, which goes back some 200 years. It is a key feature of the relationship between Britain and Nepal and, as we all know, the Gurkha soldiers in the British Army have served this country in two world wars and many other conflicts, and they continue to do so today with the utmost distinction. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that political developments in Nepal, particularly the assumption of power by the King, will not in any way imperil the Gurkha connection or reduce its strength. That is a key assurance that I am seeking from the Minister.
	Fourthly, I want to find out what role the British Government see themselves playing bilaterally with Nepal in the key objective of trying to restore parliamentary democracy in that country. Are they, through our embassy in Kathmandu, engaging in dialogue with the constitutional parliamentary parties right across the political spectrum in Nepal? Are they also seeking to establish any degree of communication, directly or indirectly, with the Maoists themselves? What policy are the Government following bilaterally? Is it simply a passive policy of noting what is going on, or are they trying to make a contribution to bringing about an effective constitutional parliamentary settlement in Nepal?
	Fifthly, the European Union joined together and made a statement at the beginning of February, when it condemned the assumption of power by the King. It also made a strong statement on human rights and declared, as other countries and organisations round the world have done, that there should be a restoration of parliamentary democracy in Nepal. Does the Minister consider that that is the only role that the EU can play in this crisis? Perhaps it is; Nepal is far away, and many EU member states have very little involvement with it. Many, understandably, do not even have embassies in Kathmandu. Again, it would be helpful if the Minister could clarify the British Government's expectations of the EU in this regard.
	Sixthly, I am disappointed at the degree of non-involvement by the United Nations in the critical situation in Nepal. There has been limited involvement through the UN Commission on Human Rights, but that is all. Nepal has not been referred to the Security Council and, perhaps even more surprisingly, no steps have been taken by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to establish a special representative in the country. Could the Minister tell me whether the British Government would welcome Nepal being taken to the Security Council, and whether they would welcome the UN Secretary-General having a special representative in Nepal? I would like to hear any comments that the Minister may wish to make about a future UN role in efforts to resolve the crisis in the country.
	My seventh and last question relates to the position of Nepal's all-important southern neighbour, India, with its 1,000-mile-long boundary with Nepal open. Of all Nepal's neighbours, it is undoubtedly the country with the most to gain from a satisfactory settlement in Nepal. Equally, the country that will have most to lose if Nepal dissolves into complete Maoist control is India, because India has an incipientindeed, I would say more than incipientMaoist-type problem with the Naxalites in the country.
	India is, of course, deeply suspicious of any form of external involvement in Nepal, being always influenced by its position on external involvement in Kashmir. Having said that, I would add that I have no doubt that India is in a position to influence events in Nepal like, perhaps, no other country. What are the British Government doing to try to maximise the Indian Government's contribution to achieving a settlement in Nepal?
	When people in this country hear mention of Nepal they understandably think of the majestic Himalayas, but Nepal is very much more than its mountains. Nepal is a country with a long and independent history. It is a country with a depth and quality of culture that is truly remarkable. And it is a country whose people are characterised by their strength, their courage and their loyalty, along with a true gift of friendship. It is the people of Nepalwho face brutality on an appalling scale, who face living in a climate of fear, who face serious denials of their human rightswho need their human rights and freedoms to be restored. I ask, and urge, the British Government to do all in their power to that end.